Catching Some Zzz’s

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. It’s a conundrum that started after a lengthy illness, and I suppose the sleeplessness is related to lingering anxieties. I either cannot fall asleep, or I awake in the night unable to return to rest. It’s a frustrating experience that only intensifies as I feed the situation with my thoughts and fears about not getting enough sleep. Naturally, the more I resist, the more it persists. I want to sleep, and yet I keep coming up short.

In the quiet hours of the night, while the world around me sleeps, I find myself alone with my racing thoughts — sometimes spiraling, sometimes praying, always yearning for peace. In those moments, I feel a bit like the disciples in John 21, who fished all night and caught nothing. I go to bed hoping to catch some zzz’s and come up empty. I imagine them out on the water — tired, cold, worn out from effort that yields nothing. They were doing what they knew, leaning on old habits and routines. And still, the nets remained bare.

This morning, at the break of dawn after yet another sleepless night, I realized I had been relying on everything I knew — the old routines that once brought results: chamomile tea, deep breathing, reading in low light, contemplative prayer. But nothing seemed to work. Like the disciples, I kept casting my net into familiar waters, but my efforts yielded nothing.

What strikes me is that Jesus didn’t stop the night from being long. He didn’t prevent their struggle. He let the disciples experience the emptiness of their efforts — and then met them in the morning light with guidance and abundance. He turned their exhaustion into encounter, their fruitless work into miraculous harvest, and “though there were so many fish, the net was not torn.” That small detail speaks deeply to me. It reminds me that even when I feel stretched thin, even when the weight of what I’m carrying feels like too much, I will not break. His grace holds me together.

Perhaps those sleepless hours aren’t wasted after all. Maybe they are sacred ground — the kind we don’t always recognize in the dark — where Jesus walks quietly alongside us, unseen but never absent. He is there in the stillness, and in our feeble attempts to cast and recast by our own strength — often missing the fact that His presence has been with us all along. And then, just as the sky begins to lighten, He calls out: “Come, have breakfast.”

This morning, I find peace in that image: Jesus at the water’s edge, the fire already burning, the table already set. He invites me to come and sit, just as I am — tired or restless, discouraged or hopeful — and be fed by His love. There is something so gentle and holy about that invitation. After the long night, after the empty nets and weary hearts, Jesus simply offers Himself — and a meal. Bread and fish, prepared on the shore. Nourishment for tired bodies and comfort for worn-out souls.

Somehow, even in my own weariness, I begin to see that my nets are not empty after all. Even though the rest I longed for didn’t come, grace still arrived — in quiet moments of prayer, in the strength to keep going, in the awareness that I am not alone. The new day holds promise, not because I’ve conquered the night, but because He is here — because His presence fills what my striving never could.