A Song in the Night

I can usually tell the state of my emotional health by the presence or absence of a song in my spirit.

Sleep has been elusive.  I've been able to fall asleep initially, but if I wake up for any reason, I cannot settle back into rest.  So I listen.  There is no internal song these nights.

I have no emotional energy to dig deep, to figure out how to recenter or what's in the way.  There's no song and it feels too overwhelming to do anything to change that.  So as I let the darkness hug me, I am listening.

At first, all I could hear were sounds of a city at night and a quiet house; cars and sirens and train whistles; the gentle ticking of the clock and an occasional cough from a sleeping child.  But then I began to hear something else.  Every night. Whenever I wake up, until the second I fall back to sleep.

It took me awhile to make friends with the Northern Mockingbird who chirps outside my window all night long.  I was annoyed at first, blaming my inability to fall back to sleep on him.  But over the last few days, I've decided to listen more carefully, to glean from what he is offering.

One of the things I learned about this little guy from the trusty Internet is that he will continue to add new sounds to his repertoire throughout his life.  He may learn around 200 songs before he dies.  Remarkable.

In my songless night season, maybe I'm in between songs.  Maybe the old song disappeared so I can embrace a new sound, create a new song.  That possibility is hope as the darkness continues to hug me almost too tightly and the mockingbird shares his song with me tonight.