Sep 21, 2014 6 min read

Dear Sleep. We were once friends. In fact, we were great friends. You were always there for me when I needed you. I knew that I could count on you through thick and thin.

If I was sick, you were there. If I had a long day, you were there to greet me at the door. We were in it to win it. Friends for life. You and I were unstoppable. Then one day, it was a Tuesday, you left me.What happened? Did I do something to offend you? Please come back my friend. I will do anything to make this right. With love, Gina.

You just read my letter to sleep. As you can surmise, sleep left me. Normally my days begin between 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. daily. Now, at least for the last few days, I’ve been awake at 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 am. I don’t know if sleep left me or if my internal alarm clock is set to “rise and shine” at the most inconvenient hour possible. But there I lay, awake, wide awake, ready to start my days. I toss and turn for a little while. Then, after about 10 minutes, I start to sneeze. I sneeze so hard that I probably wake up the neighborhood. Its my allergy season – ugh. After sneezing my head off, I lay there, hoping for some miraculous sleep dust to fall over me.

Thursday night included quite a peculiar night of sleep for me. Thursday morning I started my day at 3:30 am. I could not – no matter what I tried to do – return to sleep. So I laid there awake until it was time to get out of bed, walk on the treadmill, and prepare for work. All day long, I yawned and yawned, but I pushed through my drowsy funk and completed the tasks for the day. I also made sure to stay awake until at least 9:30 pm. I know for some of you that bedtime is quite early. But when you’ve been awake since 3:30 am the same day, you grow a little tired. Anyway, I made it to my comfy bed. I was so exhausted, I surely thought that sleep and I would now be bffs again. Wrong!

I woke up at 2:30 a.m. on Friday. Determined to stay connected to sleep, I covered my head with my blanket and tightly closed my eyes. It took another 60 minutes before I was sound asleep. Well maybe sound isn’t the correct term. You see, I started dreaming. I had one of the most graphic, memorable, emotional dreams that I’ve ever had. I am not going to go into detail here, but I will share that my dream included one of the most powerful lessons I’ve ever learned – the value in pain.

In John Maxwell’s book, the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, he talks about the value of bad experiences in his explanation of the Law of Pain. He shares that “good management of bad experiences leads to great growth.” One of the major truths about life, is that life is filled with good experiences and bad experiences. In most cases, we cannot control whether or not we will have bad or good experiences. However, we can control how we respond to those experiences. The only way to truly understand pain and to learn from it, is to have a positive life stance. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked. “People who turn pain into gains have a positive life stance.” They are committed to making the most out of life and its experiences, valuing every moment and adding value to every opportunity.

Consider my dream. At one point in the dream, I found myself running with a crowd of people, unable to catch my breath. A female police officer stops me and arrests me. She doesn’t explain why but I remember looking in her eyes and seeing her fear but feeling my safety. Weird, I know. She had tears running down her cheek. I immediately felt connected to her. Cuffed hands behind my back, I knew that she was keeping me safe. I wasn’t sure what I was running from. I do remember that I was one of the last ones. I just couldn’t keep up with the crowd. I remember hearing gunshots and seeing chaos in the streets. But I ended up in a tunnel, alone, in the dark, gasping for air.

Now I’m not going to go all Joseph on you and start interpreting dreams – please don’t ask me to consider your dreams (read Genesis 40). However, I will share with you why this part of my dream is a reminder that there is value in pain. It seems that in my dream, my poor physical health (hmmm – foolishness) kept me safe. I couldn’t keep up with the crowd (another example of value in pain), so I found myself alone and in a dark place. That dark place provided me with safety and a protector (the police officer). There was pain in running. There was pain in being alone. There was pain in being scared. But…there was value in being left behind. There was value in the darkness.

This is also true for my frustration with sleep. Although I found myself somewhat tired at the end of each day, the pain of exhaustion brought the value of time. For each day that I was an early riser, I chose to turn my pain into gains and submit my mind to the Lord to pray. My mom always told me that if you wake up that early in the morning, its intercessory prayer time. Someone needs your prayers.

What are you doing with your pains? Are you complaining about them? Sharing with every person you see how life is so hard and difficult? Or are you turning your pains into gains? Sharing the good news of how blessed you are? Expressing gratitude for the gifts you’ve been called to use?

For those of you who are complaining and waiting for your pains to go away instead of finding the value in them, I challenge you to put on new glasses. Look at life through a different lens. Stop “refusing to accept responsibility for your growth,” and make an effort to passionately pursue your purpose. Find value in the pain my friends. Read Joshua 1:9 and Luke 17:21.

Gina Jones is a life-long resident of Fayette County and serves the community as an encourager, educator and advocate.Learn more about Gina at www.gmarieproductions.com.