Three Feet From Where She Sleeps

The desk is three feet from her head, and the lamp has been on past midnight since last winter.

You work late because that is when it is quiet. You are careful. You angle the lamp at the wall, you keep the chair from scraping, you breathe in a particular way when you are concentrating and she has told you about that twice, laughing.

And she has never once asked you to stop. She says it does not bother her. She says she sleeps through anything.

But you lie there sometimes after you have finished and you know she was awake at two, because her breathing changed when you moved the chair, and you have decided not to think about that.

I am not going to tell you to work less or to get up earlier, because that is advice and there is none of it here. I am going to talk about a verse about sleep that says something unexpected about who gives it.

He giveth his beloved sleep

There is a line in Psalm 127 about working late, and it is aimed directly at men who are still up.

The psalm has been talking about building and watching and the limits of human effort, and then it gets specific about hours.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2, King James Version)

You are not the one holding this up, and you never were. Psalm 127:2 names sitting up late as vain effort and puts sleep down as a gift God gives, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a bedroom corner where a lamp is being lifted off a table.

Look at what it does not say. It does not say late work is lazy or sinful. It says vain, which means it does not achieve the thing the man thinks it achieves.

And then sleep is described as given. Not earned by finishing, not what is left over. A gift, handed to people God loves, which includes the woman three feet away.

You have sleep given to you as a gift, and it has never once been the reward for finishing. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a psalm about building and watching reach a man at a small table at half past midnight, and Psalm 127:2 puts the sitting up late and the giving of sleep in one sentence.

What she has been absorbing

Let me say something about her saying it does not bother her, because she means it and it is not the whole truth.

She said it the first week, when it was temporary and she wanted you to have what you needed. And having said it once, she cannot now say the opposite without it sounding like a complaint about a thing she already agreed to.

You were never refused, and what she said once has never once been a standing permission. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what an early yes turned into, and the written word puts sleep down as God's gift to the people He loves in Psalm 127:2.

And here is the thing that is easy to miss. It is not the light and not the chair. It is that the room where a person is most unguarded has had somebody working in it for a year.

A bedroom is the one room in a house with no job. That was its whole function, and it has quietly been given one.

You are able to give that room back its emptiness, and giving it has never once cost you the work. His Spirit is the one who lets a man see what a room was for, and Psalm 127:2 has God giving sleep to His beloved rather than leaving it to what is left over.

The desk comes out

So here is the exercise, and it is furniture rather than willpower.

Move the desk out. Today, while it is light. The laptop, the lamp, the papers, the chair. Anywhere else, including somewhere much worse.

You are able to move one desk today, and moving it has never once been giving up on the work. Psalm 127:2 calls the sitting up late vain and names sleep as a gift, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one afternoon of carrying possible for a man who has worked in there since last winter.

And do not bargain. Not a smaller desk, not a deal about only until ten, not moving it to the other side of the room. The thing that has to leave the room is the work, not the noise.

Then turn that lamp off in there tonight and leave it off. You will find out within a week that you do not actually need those hours, which is the part the psalm has already told you.

You were never required to hold up a household with your own late hours, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a man past the belief that the work depends on him being awake, and the written word calls sitting up late vain in Psalm 127:2 without calling the man who does it lazy.