The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night

It was Angèle's mom's birthday and we were spending the night outside the city.

We'd eaten mini fatayas - fried meat turnovers - a hearty dinner, cake, and downed endless rounds of fruit juice and hot tea.

Eventually around 3:00am, my eyes refused to stay open any longer, so I excused myself to bed...although I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep right away, since the bedroom was right off the living room where everyone was hanging out.

I crawled under the mosquito net and tucked myself in.  I was anything but comfortable.

Mosquitoes - a veritable swarm of them - whined outside the net.  I lay there hoping and praying they wouldn't discover the all-too-obvious holes in the net.

At some point, one of the kids would be coming in to sleep.  My only hope was to fall asleep before then.

But before too long, the door opened, the light was turned on, and Germain tugged at the mosquito net.  He wiggled under it and flopped down on the other side of the bed.

He promptly fell asleep and proceeded to snore.  Loudly.  I nudged him.  He neither moved nor stopped snoring.  I pushed harder.  No luck.  I sat up and tried rolling him halfway over.  Still no luck.

I sank back down on my pillow and sighed irritably - the kind of irritation that comes with deep exhaustion.

It was going to be an intolerable night.

However, in keeping with His record of unexpected grace, the Lord gave me a gift that night: the gift of time with Him.  Time to work through things, to reflect, to listen to Him.  As the case usually is, I hadn't realized I needed it and certainly wouldn't have ever asked for it in the form of a sleepless night...

But that's the beauty of grace.  He knows what we need and is so ready to give us exactly that.