Lullaby

Spent Monday morning fretting at the Subaru place, waiting for my hybrid to get its “well car” check-up. Then I fretted some more in the afternoon, feeling bereft and put-upon, my mental state a fermenting compost heap. A layer of generic existential dread was the base,  topped by a thick seam of current events-induced distress having to do with politics, war, climate change, vaccines, the stock market, corruption, AI, immigration, and microplastics. And over it all stretched a thin blanket of IRS-related angst, fueled by the thrusts and parries of dueling accountants.

That night, as I sat on the edge of the bed, Truffle the dog settling in his crate, Telemann the cat waiting eagerly to recline on my chest, I wondered if the thrumming in my ears was the hoofbeats of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, or just the beating of my over-burdened heart. How in the world would I ever get to sleep?

I checked my inbox for the 500th, and I hoped the final, time of the day and came across an email from a friend. It was A Night Prayer, from the New Zealand Prayer Book. I read it and, possibly because of my debilitated, vulnerable state, but probably by virtue of its…virtue, I found myself in an unexpected state of calm. This felt so delicious that, despite my studious avoidance of religious topics here, I am including the Prayer in the hope that it may prove helpful should you ever happen to have a stressful day. (NB, you don’t even have to believe in God to experience the benefits.)

“What has been done has been done/what has not been done has not been done/let it be…” I don’t know about you, but I heave a sigh of relief every time I read these lines. I find them as soothing as the lullaby my mother used to sing to me when I was an infant.

Monday night, though, no sooner had I heaved that sigh than a new accountant-generated email appeared in my inbox, and I figured that all the prayers in the world would not lull me to sleep if I didn’t respond to it right then. So I got up, dislodging Telemann, and went to my computer, squeezed the last drops of logic out of my brain, and sent off a reply.

Then I went back to bed, reread the prayer, re-sighed my sigh, lay back on the pillow, patted my chest in invitation to the cat, who didn’t have to be asked twice, turned off the light, and closed my eyes.