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Sleep is just weird. The idea that for a full third of our entire lives our bodies and minds just check out has fascinated humanity forever. Even today, with our amazing scientific sophistication, we know less about sleep than almost any other natural daily function. It seems new studies about the amount we need emerge annually, with new findings and the latest recommendations.

And few areas of human functioning seem to confound parents more than sleep. Think about it. As new parents, we literally beg for our baby to get to sleep and stay asleep, just so we can get some more sleep of our own. “Please, just stay asleep for 30 more minutes!” Of course, by the time the kids are teenagers; our pleas are just the opposite. “Please get out of bed; we have to leave in 30 minutes!”

But all sleep is not equal. Fixation with the amount of sleep neglects to consider the quality of that sleep. Just one glance at the current mattress wars tells us so. From number settings to memory foam, new promises of that peaceful and rest-filled sleep crowd our airwaves and billboards. And that’s what we all really crave. We all long for that restful feeling, that “at peace” feeling that sometimes comes after a good night’s sleep. We long for a sense of calm, both within us and around us, that can help us embrace each day (especially mornings with your teenager) and face each night (especially getting your toddler to bed early).

But the fact is that many of never feel “at peace,” no matter how weightless we feel on our mattress, no matter how many hours of sleep we get. That’s because being asleep and being at rest are not the same thing. And being at rest has less to do with hours and individually wrapped springs than we think.

Two Stories About Sleep

At this point in the article, at the risk of offending many of you, I am going to examine a couple of Bible stories¹. I certainly do not intend to offend anyone, and I hope that everyone, regardless of faith background, can find wisdom through the telling of these ancient stories. Both of these stories tell tales of a Middle Eastern man, fast asleep, in the bottom of a boat. And in both these stories, the boat is not floating on still waters, but is rather surrounded by a thunderous storm crashing waves on all its sides. Yet both still managed to sleep. These men were not alone on their respective boats, and so they shared one more similarity: panicked and angry shipmates. Two men, in the hulls of their boats, with waves crashing around them and anxious shipmates above them, fast asleep.

But that is where their similarities end.

1.
The story of Jonah is fairly well-known, even to those outside the Judeo-Christian traditions. Its remarkable tale of a man’s three-day stay in the belly of a whale is such a part of Western folklore that it finds its way weaved into that other remarkable tale of a son running away from his father, "Pinocchio".

And that running away is the significant part of the Jonah narrative. Yes, the whale (or big fish, for you literalists) part is rather fascinating, but this story is about an experience that affects all the rest of us. It is a story about running away from our calling, running away from our destiny, running away from our God. For whatever reason, God called Jonah to deliver a message. That calling, in and of itself, made him a prophet. We don’t know how Jonah received that call, but we do he heard it someway, loud and clear. And he didn’t hesitate. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to run away. He wanted no part of Life’s call upon his life.

And so he boarded a Mediterranean ship bound for a foreign land, exchanged information with his shipmates, and soon fell fast asleep in the hull. We don’t know how, but I’m guessing he was fairly exhausted. Wringing our hands in anxiety and wrenching our necks by looking over our shoulder with guilt tends to tire us all. That’s one of the prices of running from our responsibility—the sheer exhaustion of worry.

And that was Jonah’s clear motivation — running from his responsibility. He was trying to escape his unique mission in life. And soon God chases after him, sending a furious squall. But it’s not the waves that wake the sleeping Jonah—it’s his panicked shipmates literally shaking him awake. That’s when the rest of the story, the popular one about the whale, really begins.

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But I’m interested in the running from God part. One of my favorite quotes comes from another, unrelated religious figure. The Buddha once said, “Our work is to discover our work.” This implies that it’s incumbent upon us to discover our own uniqueness, and then use that to bless the world. Well, Jonah doesn’t have to discover his work—God made his very clear to him. And Jonah made his desire to avoid that work with equal clarity.

Jonah was, despite what anybody says about him, a man of some integrity. Yes, he was running from God, running from his destiny. But at least he was honest about it. The story reports that Jonah had actually told his shipmates he was doing so.

He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land. This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?" (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.)

Jonah 1:9,10

Integrity does not always mean doing the “right” thing. Integrity just means doing the thing you say you’re doing; doing the thing you’re meaning to do. Jonah meant to run away from God, he said he was running from God, and he did, in fact, attempt to do it. That’s far more integrity than most of us ever exhibit. I usually run from God, shirking my responsibilities to the world around me (to my spouse, to my kids) while at least verbally pretending to do just the opposite.

2.
Our second man in a boat story comes from The Gospel of Mark in the Christian New Testament. According to Mark, Jesus has begun his hectic teaching and healing ministry, but without the normal trappings of any other hectic pace. Jesus is moving quickly, to be sure, but his pace is like that of an experienced runner. The runner’s body may be quickly plowing through the air, but the heartbeat inside is calmer than anyone could guess. Not unlike a boat surrounded by crashing waves, yet harboring a calm heart in its hull—a man at complete rest.

And that’s how he came to be asleep in the bottom of a boat, despite the surrounding storm. The way the story tells it, people have traveled for days just to see and hear this new prophet touring the Palestinian countryside. And Jesus continues to dazzle with his confident teaching and miraculous healing. And his disciples want nothing but continued growth, continued excitement. But just as his influence begins to peak, Jesus surprises them all by cutting off the helpline. Let’s gather in a boat and go to the other side of the lake, he says, for that’s why my father sent me. His mission leads him to say “no” to all these people. These desperate folks may have known in faith and hope that all he had to do was look in their general direction, and they would receive healing from their life-threatening illnesses, and yet suddenly, he’s up and gone. He’s boarded a boat with his friends, and they’re headed far away.

And with all of their cries in the distant background, Jesus falls fast asleep. And when a storm arises out of seemingly nowhere, Jesus stays fast asleep.

This story of Jesus asleep in the boat appears in three New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But only in Mark’s Gospel do we find a small, but significant, paraphrase.

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.

-Mark 4:35, 36 (italics mine)

“Just as he was.” Why include that paraphrase? What I like to think is the writer wanted to emphasize that all of these actions, from the decision to leave the throngs behind to the subsequent rest at the bottom of the boat, came naturally. Jesus’ popularity was thriving, his following was growing. And yet again, here he is abruptly leaving all that behind for some downtime before starting again somewhere else. And Mark says it’s all comes from who he is, just as he is. He is at rest while working, he is at rest while making tough decisions that lead people to question his motives, and he is at rest while literal storms threaten to tear his boat, his disciples, and his mission apart.

He is at rest because, unlike Jonah, he is not running from his God. He is walking with his God. Jesus is portrayed as one completely comfortable in his own skin. He is shown as one who has integrated his purpose, his motives, and his choices. Jesus is shown as calm, even in the midst of the storm. That’s what it means to be at rest—to be so sure of yourself and your place in this chaotic world that you don’t need the world around you to be calm. You don’t need your spouse to meet your needs, you don’t need your kids to obey your every command, and you don’t need every situation to be just right in order for you to be so.

So What?

First of all, this examination does not reveal that the Christian New Testament is better than the Hebrew Bible in providing examples of calm, integrated leaders. The former gives us Peter shucking all his integrity by denying Jesus three times. The Hebrew Bible gives us sterling heroes of integrity in the face of anxious opposition, like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Daniel. And here are three things that all of these leaders came to learn:

1. Just because we’re asleep doesn’t mean we’re at rest. We can understand this literally—we’ve all had a restless sleep that left us more tired than before. But we can also understand this in a more meaningful way—we all know what it means to exhaust ourselves with worry. Like Jonah, we know what happens when we aren’t right with ourselves or our God—we toss and turn all day and all night. Being true to ourselves and our own unique calling is the greatest recipe for sound sleep because it eliminates the greatest cause for problems in our lives—our own self-destruction.

Another of my favorite quotes comes from what some people may see as an unlikely source of self-awareness. In discussing one of his favorite pastimes, former President Clinton had this to say: “Golf is like life in that the greatest wounds are those that are self-inflicted.” Painfully, he would know. But so would the rest of us. The rest of us know that compromising ourselves for the sake of easing an uncomfortable situation doesn’t leave us at peace, even if it allows us to avoid a fight and get some sleep. The rest of us know that, along with Swami H.H. Tejomayananda, “The softest pillow is a clean conscience.”

2. Just because we begin to discover our rest doesn’t mean we’ll be exempt from the storms of life. Just because Jesus had the power to calm the storms didn’t mean he needed to. He chides his disciples not for their lack of faith in his power to calm the storm; he chides them for their lack of faith that along with him, they could find themselves at rest, even as the storm waves tossed them to and fro.

Staying calm in times of ease is just that, easy. Staying calm in the midst of the storm, that’s revolutionary. And that’s why staying calm, no matter what, is your number one priority. Because unlike Jesus, we do not have the power to smooth the seas and erase the thunderclouds. I wish I did. There are certainly storms I can think of that I would have loved to have sent away long before the waves tested my developing calm. But I couldn’t have prevented my son’s broken arm a few years back. Or my wife’s cancer last year. And I won’t be able to next time. What I can do is hold on for the ride, and make strengthening my own sense of rest today more important than any weather forecasting for tomorrow.

3. Just because we do find our rest doesn’t mean others will like it. More than likely, as you “discover your work” and the peace that comes only from following your unique calling, you will also find ridicule, particularly from those who have yet to find theirs. We see this in Jesus’ disciples, who profess their anger at Jesus’ seeming indolence. How can you be idly asleep when we are at such risk? Is it simply that you don’t even care?

Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"

-Mark 4:38

As you find your rest, as you become what I call “ScreamFree,” you too will encounter this kind of critical resistance. Your child will complain with ferocity when you, upon hearing his report about an “undeserved” grade, don’t freak out and storm the school. Your spouse will have to fight all sorts of conflicted feelings when you inform him about your plans to spend a couple of nights away strengthening yourself with exercise and/or the companionship of friends. Or worse, when you refuse to reciprocate his efforts to pull you into that same old argument.

“It’s like you don’t even care about me!” will be their cry. And inside you’ll know, whether they ever figure it out, that your care for them is exactly why you’re doing this. You care enough about them to retreat away from them. You care enough about them to free them from having to care for you. You care enough to approach them from a position of restful calm rather than restless anxiety.

And Now What?

In ScreamFree Parenting I have a chapter entitled “Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First.” While the airlines have a lot to learn about their business and financial practices, they got it absolutely right in telling us all to secure our own oxygen masks before securing the masks of others. To those of us traveling with kids, this almost sounds heretical. “What? Yeah, right. My instincts tell me to serve my kids first, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

But the airlines get it right, because they realize one definite truth: If I’m out of breath, I can’t help anybody.

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And you know who’s out of breath? It’s not the people you really respect. It’s not those who you truly lean on, count on in your time of need. The people who are out of breath are the ones who are restless; the ones who need to serve in order to be served in return. It’s the ones who are usually running from the rest they crave, because rest means truly facing ourselves. And restless people aren’t comfortable in their own skin—they’re the people who would rather crawl out of their skin than simply rest with themselves and their god, warts exposed and all.

Putting on your own oxygen mask first takes self-care very seriously. Applying this principle to all your relationships means knowing that you are the only one responsible for taking care of you. And if you want to truly serve others, you have to move beyond needing them, or someone else, to serve you in return. That way you can begin to demonstrate to your kids, your spouse, your co-workers one simple truth: I take care of me so that you don’t have to.

And that involves learning to distinguish between an escape and a retreat. Both include leaving others behind, and both may include the exact same activities. But like with Jonah and Jesus, motivation makes all the difference. An escape is a fleeing from something (or someone). Like a one-way air flight, an escape has little thought about the return, it can only see the departure. It is largely unplanned and usually unhelpful. In fact, with escapes into alcohol, affairs, emotional outbursts (and equally emotional shut-downs), they are usually self-destructive.

A retreat, on the other hand, has a larger purpose in mind than some simple flight from the present situation. A retreat is planned, it is intentional, and it has a plan for return. Think about the most common connotation of a retreat: an army fleeing from the fight. But with any sort of strong leadership, a retreat is done not to flee, but to regroup. To return again to the battle, to the call, with a renewed strength, vigor, and enthusiasm. A retreat is always done with the return in mind.

And here’s the relationship between the two: The less we take intentional, productive retreats, the more we will find ourselves fleeing in unintentional, panicked, self-destructive escapes.

That’s the ultimate difference between Jonah and Jesus. While both asleep in the bottom of a boat, one was escaping and one retreating. Jonah had no idea about the future, no intention of strengthening himself for living and breathing his call, his destiny. He simply exhausted himself trying to escape that call, that destiny. He was escaping, the very opposite of calm, strengthening rest. Jesus, according to Mark, was a master at retreating. Retreating in order to regroup with his students. Retreating in order to return stronger. Retreating in order to truly rest.

And now it’s time for bed.

1. The trouble with Bible stories, whether they come from the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament, is that we too often let “religious” questions distract us from life lessons. I don’t mean that Bible stories are to be devoid of any religious significance, far from it. But I do mean that questions about the story’s historical accuracy, and/or the story’s believability, can easily lead us away from the story’s meaning. The Adam and Eve narrative in the Book of Genesis is a prime example. That story is a tale about the past told to help us make meaning of the present, with powerful themes of intimacy, consequence, and blame. But all these themes get neglected when the story merely becomes a weapon against the teaching of Darwinian evolution. Whether the story happened exactly as it says it did becomes more important than whether the story has any impact on what I say, or what I do. Rather than see these stories as proof for any religious devotion, I rather view them as part of our spiritual heritage, stories that can shape us all into more trusting, more daring, more human, people.