The Baby Monitor I Turned Face-Down at 3 A.M.
The Baby Monitor I Turned Face-Down at 3 A.M.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 8, 2026
I did not unplug it. I want to be honest about that, because unplugging it would have meant admitting what I was actually doing. I just reached over in the dark and turned the little screen face-down on the nightstand, so the light would stop filling the room and I would not have to watch my granddaughter's crib on the camera while she worked herself up for round four. My daughter is recovering from surgery two doors down the hall, and I am the one covering nights this month. By three in the morning I had nothing left in me, not patience, not softness, not even the energy to get up right away. I lay there listening to the muffled cry through a screen I could not see, and some small, ugly part of me thought, let her cry a little longer. I am so tired.
I have been sober eleven years, and I used to think exhaustion was the one struggle that did not need a spiritual explanation. A tired body is just a tired body, I told myself, nothing underneath it to examine. What that night taught me is that exhaustion does not stay in the body. It moves into the soul if you let it sit there long enough, and it starts making the same selfish calculations I used to make back when drinking was how I solved every discomfort I did not want to feel. I was not cruel to that baby. I was just too depleted to be the man I actually want to be, and depletion has its own quiet morality, one that starts bargaining the second nobody is watching.
I used to think the answer to exhaustion was simply more rest, and sometimes it is. Solomon names the particular tiredness that comes from trying to manufacture your own security by sheer effort. "It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2, NKJV). I used to read that as a tidy argument for an earlier bedtime. Standing in that dark nursery, unable to simply go to sleep because a baby needed me, I finally understood it was never about the hour on the clock. It is about whose effort the outcome actually depends on, mine or His.
Some exhaustion cannot be slept away, because it is not only the body that is tired. Jesus did not offer the weary crowd that followed Him a nap. He offered them Himself. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30, NKJV). Rest for your souls, not just your schedule. I had been trying to solve a soul problem with a sleep problem, and only one of those two has ever actually been offered to me by name.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once carried me through a night like that one. I can tell myself accurately that the baby will stop crying eventually, that one bad night will not undo months of showing up, that everybody runs out of patience sometimes. All of that is true, and none of it has ever once refilled the actual tank, because thinking is one of the very things exhaustion takes from me first. Paul does not tell the Galatians to argue themselves out of growing weary. He simply tells them not to stop. "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9, NKJV). Not losing heart has never once been something I could talk myself into on my own strength, because my own strength was the thing already gone.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that a better night's sleep never could. Jesus did not just promise rest and walk away. He offered Himself as the source of whatever a mattress cannot supply. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, NKJV). I had been trying to be a branch generating its own strength, and a branch was never built to work that way. Paul tells the Romans that the same Spirit who raised a dead body out of a tomb is not too small a thing to reach into a worn-out one at three in the morning. "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11, NKJV). That is a promise about the body I am dragging out of bed tonight, not only about the next life.
I turned the monitor back face-up, got up, and walked down the hall to a baby who just needed to be held for a while. It was not resolve that got me out of that bed. It was asking Him for what I did not have left and finding, again, that He had already supplied it before I finished asking. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how empty your tank is right now, whatever room you are too tired to walk back into. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on your own reserves holding out, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you to run on empty alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 127:2; Matthew 11:28-30; Galatians 6:9; John 15:5; Romans 8:11.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 8, 2026
I did not unplug it. I want to be honest about that, because unplugging it would have meant admitting what I was actually doing. I just reached over in the dark and turned the little screen face-down on the nightstand, so the light would stop filling the room and I would not have to watch my granddaughter's crib on the camera while she worked herself up for round four. My daughter is recovering from surgery two doors down the hall, and I am the one covering nights this month. By three in the morning I had nothing left in me, not patience, not softness, not even the energy to get up right away. I lay there listening to the muffled cry through a screen I could not see, and some small, ugly part of me thought, let her cry a little longer. I am so tired.
I have been sober eleven years, and I used to think exhaustion was the one struggle that did not need a spiritual explanation. A tired body is just a tired body, I told myself, nothing underneath it to examine. What that night taught me is that exhaustion does not stay in the body. It moves into the soul if you let it sit there long enough, and it starts making the same selfish calculations I used to make back when drinking was how I solved every discomfort I did not want to feel. I was not cruel to that baby. I was just too depleted to be the man I actually want to be, and depletion has its own quiet morality, one that starts bargaining the second nobody is watching.
I used to think the answer to exhaustion was simply more rest, and sometimes it is. Solomon names the particular tiredness that comes from trying to manufacture your own security by sheer effort. "It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2, NKJV). I used to read that as a tidy argument for an earlier bedtime. Standing in that dark nursery, unable to simply go to sleep because a baby needed me, I finally understood it was never about the hour on the clock. It is about whose effort the outcome actually depends on, mine or His.
Some exhaustion cannot be slept away, because it is not only the body that is tired. Jesus did not offer the weary crowd that followed Him a nap. He offered them Himself. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30, NKJV). Rest for your souls, not just your schedule. I had been trying to solve a soul problem with a sleep problem, and only one of those two has ever actually been offered to me by name.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once carried me through a night like that one. I can tell myself accurately that the baby will stop crying eventually, that one bad night will not undo months of showing up, that everybody runs out of patience sometimes. All of that is true, and none of it has ever once refilled the actual tank, because thinking is one of the very things exhaustion takes from me first. Paul does not tell the Galatians to argue themselves out of growing weary. He simply tells them not to stop. "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9, NKJV). Not losing heart has never once been something I could talk myself into on my own strength, because my own strength was the thing already gone.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that a better night's sleep never could. Jesus did not just promise rest and walk away. He offered Himself as the source of whatever a mattress cannot supply. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, NKJV). I had been trying to be a branch generating its own strength, and a branch was never built to work that way. Paul tells the Romans that the same Spirit who raised a dead body out of a tomb is not too small a thing to reach into a worn-out one at three in the morning. "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11, NKJV). That is a promise about the body I am dragging out of bed tonight, not only about the next life.
I turned the monitor back face-up, got up, and walked down the hall to a baby who just needed to be held for a while. It was not resolve that got me out of that bed. It was asking Him for what I did not have left and finding, again, that He had already supplied it before I finished asking. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how empty your tank is right now, whatever room you are too tired to walk back into. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on your own reserves holding out, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you to run on empty alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 127:2; Matthew 11:28-30; Galatians 6:9; John 15:5; Romans 8:11.
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