TRANSCRIPT:
So this last week I was struggling with insomnia as a result of having the coronavirus, having pneumonia and strep throat, all sorts of medication, and tons of supplements. And I asked for a lot of prayer, and that was ultimately successful, but something really extraordinary happened. Just yesterday I had a phone call with a man I’ve never met before. We were just networking; a Catholic guy from New York talking about life, faith, business, that sort of thing.
Towards the end of the call, he just mentioned offhand that he’d been really struggling with insomnia. And it was extraordinary for me to listen to him share how he had been suffering in the same way that I had just a few days ago. And he tried medicine and that it failed, he had even talked to a psychiatrist. He was kind of at his wits’ end about what to do with this going to bed, waking up in the middle of the night, and not being able to get back to sleep.
And so I shared with him what I had been doing to try and get something good out of this misery, this pain and suffering in the middle of the night. And you know how difficult it is if you’ve ever suffered that. It’s not just the difficulty of that experience overnight, but then the following day, you’re exhausted, you’re terrible, you’re short-tempered, maybe you’ve got a headache, it’s difficult to concentrate, all of those things.
And so I shared with him that when you wake up at two in the morning and you can’t get back to sleep, don’t toss and turn in bed, don’t be frustrated. Just get out of bed immediately and pull up the readings for the Mass of that day- the Introit, the first reading, the Gospel reading- and use that time to practice your mental prayer; to meditate on whichever readings from Scripture really jump out at you and grab you, and practice your mental prayer for two minutes at a time, five minutes at a time, whatever it takes. And now you’re no longer just kind of wasting away, frustrated and angry and tired in the middle of night. Now you’re actually doing something good with that time. And like St. Therese, maybe the mental prayer will help you get back to sleep. Maybe not. But the point is that you’re actually doing something good with that time; you’re growing in the spiritual life, growing in your practice of the mental prayer.
And here’s the thing: I realized that that insomnia was a cross for me to bear, to give me the opportunity to face that challenge in the middle of the night. And I thought, “You know what? That’s good enough. God has given me this cross. I’ve embraced it. I can spend some time in the middle of the night praying.”
But the really profound thing came to me on that phone call, realizing that had I not been suffering in just the previous few days, I may not have had it top-of-mind to share with this man, who I’d never met before, who was struggling with insomnia. And now he’s realized that this is an opportunity for him to use that time to grow in mental prayer.
And I got to thinking that it was a wonderful, real life, practical example that the suffering we have He permits for our good not because He hates us, not because He wants to punish us, not because He wants us to suffer, but for our own good so that we can overcome that suffering and grow. And in this case, not just overcome the suffering and grow, but pass that along to somebody else who is suffering and who heard these words for the first time. He certainly would not have heard them from his physician or his psychiatrist. He heard it from another man, a sinner, but who he can learn from about embracing the cross and growing from it. I hope that this has been helpful to you in some way. God bless you.