Afraid in the night?

            I guess I was bout six years old.  I had had a nightmare.  A whopper of a nightmare.  And as most six-year-olds will do (at least I tell myself that, so I don't feel like a wimp) I woke up and ran into my parents' room.  My mother's side of the bed faced the door.  I think that evolved from years of nursing babies in the middle of the night.  There were five of us between me, my sister and my brothers.  My father didn't have the equipment to do the job.  So my mother needed a clear path to the door.

            She was the first one I saw.  So I pleaded my cause, "Mommy, I had a nightmare."  I thought I sounded desperate enough.  She didn't.

            "Go back to sleep.  It's just a bad dream."

            No.  It was a NIGHTMARE.  A bad dream is when you miss the winning shot.  Or you loose a race.  This was a nightmare.  I was scared.  I was not going back to that bed.  No sir. 

            I could tell my mother was not getting up.  She hadn't even opened her eyes.  So I ran to the other side of the bed.  "Daddy, I had a nightmare."

            This time I saw the covers come off.  He sat up.  "Come on, let's go get a cup of tea."

            He took me down to the kitchen, started a pot of tea and stayed with me.  I can't recall at all what he said.  I can't remember if I slept the rest of the night in his bed.  But what I can remember was that he stayed with me.

            What made my father's reaction so different from my mother's?  She didn't really like me.  No just kidding.  It had nothing to do with my mother.  It had to do with my father.  And I recently realized what it may have been.

            You see my father knew what it was like to be alone, at night, afraid, unable to sleep.  He had been in the war.  He had been MIA for three days.  In the jungles of Vietnam.  He knew sleepless nights caused by the uncertainty of the unexpected.  He didn't just have sympathy for me.  He had empathy.  He shared my position.  He knew the comfort I needed because he had needed it himself.  And so he stayed with me.

            When you are feeling alone, forgotten, forsaken.  You can know that He will stay with you.  In the middle of the night, when all others will sleep.  He will not leave you.  He knows the feeling.  He has felt this pain.  As He hung upon that cross He cried in agony, "My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken me?"  If ever a man were truly alone, it was our Lord at that moment.  His friends had fled.  His enemies were laughing.  Believe me… He knows your pain, your anxiety.  He will not leave you to face the night alone.  He will stay with you.

This is the Father we have.  

SDG