I know I’m crazy, but I LOVE to laugh… and I think it’s hilarious to scare people. I love to jump the out of shadows… and catch people by surprise. After they jump, I laugh my head off. Many times I get caught as I am hiding, because anticipating surprising a person, I get the giggles like a young school girl. About 5 or 6 times a year, I will hide in behind the closet door when my husband goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night and scare him on his way back to bed. Seriously, it works every time! It would take me hours to get back to sleep… every time I stopped giggling about how far and how high he jumped, everything would replay in my mind, and the giggling would start again.
One night when my daughter and her family were living with us in Southern California, I could not sleep. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As I walked around the house, I heard someone else stirring. I hid in the little entrance way of the house. I saw my son-in-law pass by on a mission. I decided to stay in the shadows, so I could scare him as he passed back by on his way down the hall. As I heard him coming, I set my water down, and JUMPED out of the shadows. The only light in the house was coming from the streetlight and the moon shining in the windows. He not only jumped, but he started waving something in his hand at me, as if it was a weapon! I began laughing so hard I was crying! I flipped on the light switch, to find my son-in-law in, his pj’s, violently waving a Swiffer duster in my face. Once he realized what was going on, he joined my in laughter. I was laughing so hard, it was difficult to put two words together. Finally I composed myself long enough to ask him what he was doing with a duster at 3am in the morning!?! He explained that he could not sleep, and as he was laying there, he asked himself ‘what would my father-in-law do if he couldn’t sleep’…. and he decided that my husband would clean his room until his mind was tired, and he could sleep again. Now, all these years later, my son-in-law knows that my husband would read, or just roll over and go back to sleep. To this day when I recall that early morning, I giggle, not only recounting how my son-in-law jumped and was defending himself with a duster, but that he actually thought my husband would clean the house at 3am!
How many of us lay in bed, carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, having imaginary conversations with people that will never happen, trying to solve things on our own, even ‘world peace’?
Jesus asks us to give Him what is on our mind. We need to put what is bothering us, what makes us weary, the things that keep us up at night and give them to Him. He will take care of us and take care of our issue in His time.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6
In the middle of the night, both my son-in-law and I needed to find rest, to lay our anxieties at Jesus’s feet by praying to Him, presenting our requests to God.
