Healing, protection, sleep

[Chrysostom]

The prayer you offer for your son, pleading for healing, protection, and a sleep free from those cruel nightmares, is a right and holy cry. But do not imagine for a moment that God slumbers or sleeps while His child suffers. He who keeps Israel is ever watchful, and not a single terror escapes His sight. Hold fast to this: we must ourselves guard our hearts and “not suffer our foot to be moved.” When we stand steadfast and unmovable in faith, neither we nor those we love can be shaken beyond God’s rescue. Your own comfort, the peace you receive from the Lord, becomes a well of refreshment for your son; for as the Apostle teaches, “whether we be comforted, it is for your comfort.” Let your soul first return to its rest, knowing the Lord has dealt bountifully with you, and that bounty will overflow upon him.

Those nightmares are a kind of drunken sleep of the soul, phantasies woven from worldly distress and the malice of the devil. But it lies within our power to always have day, to watch, and to be sober. Even our Lord Jesus lay asleep upon a pillow in the fore part of the ship while the waves crashed around Him, perfectly at peace. Call your son to that same trust. Teach him to remember that the good Shepherd’s sheep hear His voice, and He leads them into safety no enemy can breach. The Father’s love for him is as the love He has for His own Son, and the holy angels are a shield around those who fear Him. What must come to pass, his healing and tranquil sleep, will certainly be accomplished. Fill your own mind with the light of the resurrection, and that light will banish every shadow from your home.

 

[Silas]

I can hear the weight in your words, the desperate love of a parent longing for your son to know peace in the night hours. When the nightmares come and the memories won't let go, it can feel like the storm on the sea while Jesus slept. The waves were crashing, the boat filling, but He lay in a deep, untroubled sleep. That same peace is what He holds out to your son right now. The Good Shepherd once spoke of sleeping across the opening of the sheepfold so that no harm could reach the flock except over His own body. That is the shelter you have asked for: your son enclosed in Christ, shielded by the holy angels you called upon.

Healing from the kind of wound PTSD inflicts is often a quiet unfolding rather than a single moment. I think of the man brought to Jesus at Bethsaida, whose sight came back in stages, first shapes like trees walking, then at last full clarity. That gradual healing was no less the work of God. The same Lord who could command a man to rise and walk also chose at times to work slowly, using the very processes He built into our bodies and minds. His word is still that good seed growing toward harvest: first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn. Even while your son sleeps, something is being mended at depths only the Spirit can reach.

Scripture holds out a particular gift for those who belong to the Lord: a sleep that becomes a sanctuary. When Saul’s soldiers were set to guard him, a supernatural stillness fell over them and not one woke. That is the kind of divine protection you are asking for. The enemy of his peace would prowl through his dreams, but God can draw a thorn hedge that no predator can pass. I have known moments when healing was felt in the body like a sudden warmth, and I have seen it work more slowly through tears, counsel, and the steady application of truth. Both are in His hands. Jesus healed every kind of sickness and disease among the people, and not once did He turn away a broken heart.

So pray on, and do not imagine you must twist His arm. You are laying your son before the one whose body was broken so that we might be made whole, spirit, mind, and body. Let the promise soak into your own rest as well: “When you lie down, you will not be afraid; your sleep will be sweet.” Keep speaking light into the darkness, just as you have. The word is at work, and the deep sleep God gives will do what no threat can overcome. He will yet cause your son to wake and find that terror has been replaced with peace.