Have you ever prayed for someone or something for so long and felt like nothing was changing? Have you felt like God either wasn't listening or the prayer was just too much to ask for and that there was no hope left? I have. I've prayed over broken relationships, anxiety, and even depression. I felt like God either put me on mute or was too busy answering everyone else's prayers and just leaving me in the dust. But through this one trial that I am about to share, I learned that God hadn't gone anywhere, He was just waiting to really hear my voice.
I'm not really sure how it started. One day I think I just stopped sleeping. The start of my junior year, I would get in my bed and lie awake until 6 AM and most of the time my brain would be so physically exhausted that I would end up falling asleep..for two hours until I had to get up for class. Being in college, you know that sleep is vital. I am not the same person when I don't sleep. Ask my roommates. So I decided to get some extra help from medication to make it a little easier.
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I started taking Ambien around early September. I told myself that I would take it when I really needed it. Well, I ended up "really" needing it every single night from September to March. I'm one of those people who get anxiety about everything. Sleep anxiety was one of my biggest struggles. I would wake up in the morning already anxious about sleeping that night. So this medicine was a blessing and a curse to me. It was a blessing because It finally allowed me to sleep throughout the night. But it was a curse because I relied so heavily on this medicine, that it almost became addictive. Actually, it did become addictive. I was so reliant on Ambien that I forgot how to be reliant on Jesus.
Many people knew I struggled sleeping at night. My roommates/friends/family prayed over my sleep so often that I started feeling guilty when I wasn't sleeping. I felt like God had forgotten about me. I felt like He wasn't hearing my prayers. I lost all hope.
Then the last week of March came along. I had just taken my last pill and I knew that I couldn't get any more refills. This was it. I had two options. I could either find medication from someone else to help me sleep at night, OR I could choose to believe that God was bigger than my sleeping problems. That God's power has no limits and that He could heal this part of my life. Every morning and every night that week I prayed hard and long. But what made this night different than all the other weeks I prayed, was that I didn't have the medication to rely on. All I had was Jesus.
I won't lie to you and say that I have slept like a baby every night since, but I will tell you that God has answered that prayer in ways I wasn't even expecting. He reminded me that He is bigger than any problem we have ever had. He is bigger than a broken relationship or a sin we can't seem to forget. He's even bigger than Insomnia. So I started praying like it. And I can honestly say that I haven't slept as peacefully as I have the past month and half for as long as I can remember.
That is solely because I decided to stop taking things into my own hands, and hand it over to God. I was desperate for a breakthrough. God knows what we need before we even ask, but He needs to hear our voice. When we start believing that He is bigger than any situation that we're in, that's when He starts showing off.
