Sleep Is For The Weak

"Grow" - Miranda Lee, Hockney (collage) photographs, Pentax K1000 Manual SLR, Model - Will Wigle

One of the couches in the painting studio says "Sleep is for the weak." I must be awfully weak then. I sleep a lot. I have yet to pull an all-nighter in college and I’m dearly fond of naps. My roommates freshman year thought there was something wrong with me because I slept so much. I try really hard not to be weak most of the time. Or at least to appear not to be weak. Vulnerability can suck. We think that if our fellow humans see who we really are, they’ll be less impressed. I’d rather push through my weakness. When I ran cross country in high school, we were all about mental strength. Running hard, beyond what your body says you can do. We had tshirts that said “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Unfortunately, this is bullshit. Let’s face it: I’m not the only person who sleeps. We are, by definition as humans, weak. There’s New York City, but even the inhabitants of the city that never sleeps have to make a trip to sleepy-land every once in a while. The bible may say we can do all things through God who strengthens us, but I take this as more of words of encouragement and an expression of the greatness of God rather than actually saying we can do anything. We can do anything God wants us to do, but it’s not the same as saying we can do anything we set our hearts to. I will never be a professional basketball player, for example, no matter how strong my faith in God is. I’m five foot two. He certainly works miracles, but I can safely assume through some sense of practically that I can’t do everything. 

Weakness can feel synonymous to helplessness. We feel entirely alone. It aches and throbs and we can’t even think of where to start, what to do, to escape our troubles. If we do remember to pray, our tongues our dry, without words to speak, but 1 Corinthians 15:43 tells us, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” Our hearts cry out to God. They groan. And that’s all it takes. 

In knowing that within our flesh is a Holy Spirit fluent in groan to translate for us to God, we don’t have to be afraid of our weakness. The world is quick to notice when we fail. We scrutinize each other’s every move. I used to really want to carry a red ink pad and a stamp that bluntly read, “FAIL,” to mark the irksome losers who crossed my path. I never did since that’s plain mean and I try not to let mean make its getaway from my private thoughts. I also try not to harbor those sort of thoughts because they fester, but stupid people annoy me a whole bunch. Mortals are harsh on one another’s shortcomings. Even so, God’s doing astounding things with you’re weaknesses, using them to mold you into something even more beautiful than before. Romans 8:26 says, “It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” The bible likes to use analogies involving vegetation seeing as so many folks back then were farmers. I’ve been trying to think of more contemporary metaphors: invest in weakness, profit power? None have the strength of the image of planting a seed and the mystical process of growth. Power won’t happen right away. God pulls us from within the earth and grows us shoot by shoot into a being in the full bloom of power. And, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10).

"Alone" - Monica Lee, model - Miranda Lee, digital photograph