Nate and I had the luxury of sleeping in a king size bed for four years. As we sixty-somethings age, we appreciate a good night’s sleep more and more, because it’s harder and harder to get.
Our king, purchased to celebrate our 60th birthdays, used to be in a downstairs bedroom and was available to more than just Nate and I. Volumes of girl-talk happened on that bed, as well as lounging amongst the giant pillows while watching TV. Sick kids spent their day in it, and Louisa slept there for a week after her painful tonsillectomy. Friends of our kids claimed it was “the world’s most comfy bed.”
A year after Nate died, the king got dismantled and moved from our cottage bedroom to the room next door, an Army-style bed-barracks decorated, coincidentally, in olive drab. Beds filled the floor space for group sleeping when crowds came to town, and the addition of a California king meant sleeping three more.
I went back to sleeping on our old double bed with its well-worn sheets, but once it was set up in my room where the king had been, it looked small.
“Set-back!” it shouted.
I thought, “If only I didn’t need sleep and could stay up all night, every night. Better yet, if only night wouldn’t come at all and the sun would never set…”
Right then God moved into that scene and comforted me with fresh thoughts: Nate isn’t using a bed in his new home and doesn’t miss either our king size or the double. So he gets to stay awake “around the clock” and never has to face a lonely night, because there’s no night there. All of that was good news to me, because it describes my future, too.
I’m still bound by day and night, work and sleep. But after I die, after all of us die, we’ll be free of this cycle, one of unnumbered heavenly blessings. Nate didn’t sleep well most nights, although it might have been those 15 cups of coffee he drank each day. The fact that he’ll never face another night of tossing and turning is great joy for him.
But for the rest of us, nighttime can be riddled with problems: difficulty getting to sleep or staying that way, nightmares, fear of noises or break-ins, feelings of vulnerability, and the chronic dilemma of every daytime predicament growing greater during the night. When nighttime disappears, so will these problems.
I still don’t like nighttime without Nate, but the old double bed gives me a pretty good night’s sleep. And because Nate and I slept in it for 36 years, it feels familiar, like spending the night with an old friend again.
“Night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light.” (Revelation 22:5)