Awake at Night

Sometimes I awake in the night in a complete panic. I’m not scared…at least not of the kind normally associated with the dark. I’m not afraid of dying; or better said – at these moments it is not necessarily the fear of dying that starts me awake. But awake I am, and fear has brought it about.

In these moments I find it necessary to touch something real; to reach over and feel the skin on my wife’s arm or brush her cheek with the side of my hand. I kiss the soft buttery cheeks of my children, and watch them while they sleep; so young, so peaceful and so content.

I often pray, as I can’t shake the feeling that God has awakened me for this very purpose. I begin to feel the lingering dissatisfaction of a life not yet lived to the fullest of expectations; a life that, while not yet old, can no more truly be described as young. But that barely scratches the surface. It’s not simply that I haven’t done what I want to do. The deeper issue is the fact that I haven’t done what is inside me to do; or more precisely, I haven’t done what I was MEANT to do.

As an idle youth, life appeared to stretch out in front of me like a straight desert highway, disappearing somewhere so far in the distance it didn’t really matter. “I’m young…there’s ALWAYS time.” But now, I see that point in the distance. It’s not so far to the destination, and it looms larger every day.

The question “What am I to be when I grow up?” transforms into a paradox when asked by one other than a child; yet for me it still lingers…and still I pray…and still I hope…and still I awake.