I Fell Asleep In The Chair Again

It was twenty past nine and he had a cup of tea beside him that he never touched, and his wife came through at eleven and took it away.

He does this four nights out of seven now. He does not go up. He sits down after everything is done and intends to read something and is gone inside about ten minutes, and then at some point he wakes up cold and goes to bed properly and does not feel any better in the morning.

It has been going on since about February.

There is nothing wrong. That is the part he keeps having to explain to people who assume otherwise. There is no crisis in that house, nobody is ill, the work is the work. It is just the accumulation of one perfectly ordinary thing after another over about eighteen months, and he is fifty-four, and it has caught up with him.

And on Sunday somebody said something from the front that has been rattling around in him since.

Not a criticism. It was warm and it was true and it was said well. They said: the Spirit of God lives in you.

And he sat there and thought: then why am I like this.

He is not doubting the doctrine. He would want that clear. He believes it and he has believed it for thirty years and he is not in a spiritual crisis about it.

He simply cannot get the two facts to sit in the same room. The Spirit of God lives in me. I fell asleep in a chair at twenty past nine and I will do it again tonight.

And he has had nobody to ask, because the shape of the question makes it sound as though he is complaining about God, and he is not.

And that is you in your own chair, or you would not still be reading.

The verse says dwells and it says mortal, in the same sentence

Let me put the verse down and then show you what it does not do.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.Romans 8:11

Read what is sitting next to what.

The Spirit dwells in you. And in the same sentence, without any embarrassment: your mortal bodies.

Paul puts an indwelling and a mortal body in one line and does not treat them as a contradiction that needs resolving. He does not say your body should therefore not be mortal. He does not say the dwelling cancels the mortality. He holds them together, and the whole verse assumes that a person with the Spirit of God in them will still have a body that runs down.

You are not holding a contradiction, and Paul writes both halves of yours into a single sentence. It is written that if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11). The Holy Spirit dwells in mortal bodies, which is a phrase that includes falling asleep in a chair.

Now let me say plainly what this page is not going to do, because you have probably braced for it.

It is not going to tell you to pray more. It is not going to suggest that the tiredness would lift if you got up earlier, or spent longer, or surrendered something you have not identified yet.

You are fifty-four and eighteen months into an accumulation. Prescribing effort to a man in that condition is the one thing that would make it worse, and it is offered to people in your position constantly, and it is not going to be offered here.

You are not being asked to do anything about this and nothing is being diagnosed. It is written that He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and frame is a word about a body. The Holy Spirit is not surprised to find a fifty-four year old asleep at twenty past nine.

And here is the thing I most want to hand you, because it answers the actual question.

You asked: then why am I like this?

The verse does not answer that and neither will I, because the honest answer is that you are fifty-four and it has been eighteen months and bodies do this.

What the verse does say is who is in the room while it happens.

You are dwelt in, at twenty past nine, in a chair, with a cup of tea going cold beside you. It is written that His Spirit dwells in you (Romans 8:11), and dwells is the same word whether you are awake or not. The Holy Spirit did not step out at the point you stopped being able to stay up.

And I want to say one more thing, and it matters more than anything else on this page. If the flatness has gone somewhere further than tiredness, if there have been thoughts about not being here, please tell a person this week and tell your doctor. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line or emergency number, and one human being who knows your name. Being tired is not the same as that, and if it has become that, the phone call is wisdom and not weakness.