A few months ago, I walked through one of the hardest seasons of my life.

I’ve shared parts of this journey before in my blog posts about my Spiritual Reset and the season of change I was walking through, but I wanted to share more honestly about what those weeks of insomnia were really like.

Before this happened, I never had a specific moment where I could say, “This is when my insomnia started.” Like many moms, I had experienced countless sleepless nights. There were nights spent awake with my babies, nights while traveling, camping, sleeping in unfamiliar places, or simply going through stressful seasons of life. But I never considered myself someone who had insomnia because I always returned to sleeping normally. Once I was home, settled into my own bed, and life became familiar again, my sleep always came back.

Because of that, I never saw sleeplessness as something to fear.

Until one day, everything changed.

After experiencing a miscarriage, along with several difficult situations unfolding within my family, I found myself carrying more emotional weight than I realized. I was grieving while also trying to keep moving forward. I was overwhelmed, putting pressure on myself, trying to lose weight, managing responsibilities, chasing creative ideas, and constantly pushing myself to do more. Looking back now, I can see that my body had been carrying an enormous amount of stress for a very long time.

Then one night, I couldn’t sleep.

At first, I wasn’t worried. I remember thinking, It’s okay. I’ll sleep tomorrow.

Tomorrow came, and I still couldn’t sleep.

I tried everything I knew to do. I drank herbal teas, stretched before bed, prayed, read my Bible, took melatonin, and eventually tried sleep aids. I remember taking Unisom for the first time, convinced that it would finally help me rest. Instead, I slept for only about two hours.

That frightened me.

The following night came, and once again, I couldn’t sleep.

By the third night, fear had completely taken over. My body felt trapped in panic. My hands and spine felt hot, my heart raced, I was sweating, and I lay in bed completely awake, convinced that something was terribly wrong with me.

Oddly enough, the biggest fear wasn’t even the exhaustion.

It was the thought that kept repeating in my mind:

What if I never sleep again?

My mind spiraled into every worst-case scenario imaginable. What if I permanently lost my ability to sleep? What if I couldn’t take care of my children anymore? What if I ended up hospitalized? What if my kids grew up without me?

Fear became louder than everything else.

By the fourth day without sleep, I told my husband I needed to go to the emergency room because I genuinely believed something serious was happening.

The doctors checked everything. My heart, my blood pressure, my vital signs—everything appeared normal. Physically, there was nothing alarming.

But inside, I was completely exhausted.

I think part of me expected the hospital to fix everything. I imagined they would monitor my sleep, give me something that would finally make me sleep, and somehow reset my body. Instead, I was sent home with a recommendation to try melatonin.

Later that same day, my OB prescribed Xanax to help me sleep. At that point I felt so overwhelmed that I could barely think clearly. I was desperate for relief. I just wanted the fear to stop.

But something inside me wouldn’t let me take it.

Looking back, I believe that was God gently guiding me. Instead of immediately turning to medication, I found myself researching sleep more deeply because I realized I didn’t simply want to force myself to sleep. I wanted to understand what was actually happening inside of me.

So I prayed one simple prayer:

“God, show me the way. Show me how to heal this.”

That prayer led me to what I believe God placed directly in my path: the Sleep Coach School.

While I was sitting in the emergency room, I searched online for natural ways to overcome insomnia. I came across an interview about insomnia recovery, and something about it immediately caught my attention. I decided to keep listening.

That decision changed everything.

Through the Sleep Coach School, I learned so much about sleep, anxiety, fear, and our relationship with wakefulness. One of the most life-changing things I learned was that insomnia is often not about losing the ability to sleep at all.

It’s about becoming afraid of being awake.

That described my experience perfectly.

I wasn’t only afraid that I couldn’t sleep. I was terrified of what I believed not sleeping meant. I believed I was broken. I believed something irreversible had happened to my body. I believed I had lost control.

Slowly, however, I began learning something incredibly freeing.

My body still knew how to sleep.

Sleep was never something I had to force. It’s something our bodies naturally know how to do, just like breathing, digestion, or the beating of our hearts. We don’t consciously make those things happen, and sleep is no different.

That truth connected so deeply with my faith.

God created my body. He created my mind. He created sleep itself.

Why was I fighting so hard to control something that had never belonged under my control in the first place?

That night, after four days of fear, I finally surrendered.

I prayed, “God, I trust You. My sleep is in Your hands. I don’t have to force this anymore.”

Then something incredible happened. Within about ten minutes, I fell asleep. I slept for seven hours. It honestly felt like a miracle.

The next day, the fear wasn’t completely gone. I still wondered, What if it happens again?

And sometimes, it did.

There were difficult nights. There were nights when my sleep was interrupted, nights when I struggled to fall asleep, and nights when fear tried to creep back in.

But something inside me had changed. I was no longer living in fear.

I learned that even after a difficult night, I would still be okay. I could still enjoy my children. I could still create. I could still live my life.

Insomnia no longer had to control me.

Perhaps the greatest gift that came from this journey was learning compassion toward myself. Instead of fighting my body, I started listening to it. Instead of punishing myself, I began showing myself kindness.

I stopped tracking every hour of sleep. I stopped chasing the “perfect” eight hours. I stopped believing that one restless night meant something was wrong with me.

I simply learned to trust.

When I couldn’t sleep, I stopped panicking. Sometimes I would read, listen to something encouraging, fold laundry, or simply rest quietly until sleep came. Because eventually, it always did. I hadn’t lost my ability to sleep. I had become afraid of losing it.

Today, my sleep still isn’t perfect. Sometimes it takes longer to fall asleep, and sometimes I wake up during the night.

I’m still healing. But I’m no longer fighting. I’m no longer living in fear. I’m living from a place of surrender, acceptance, and trust, knowing that God is with me.

One verse carried me through this season more than almost any other:

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” — 1 Peter 5:7

I had spent so much energy trying to control everything, even my sleep. But God was teaching me that I was never meant to carry all of it on my own.

Another verse that brought me tremendous comfort was:

“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.” — Isaiah 41:10

Looking back now, I don’t think healing was only about sleeping again.

It was about learning to surrender. It was about becoming gentler with myself. It was about learning to trust God in a place where I had absolutely no control.

I don’t know if I would say that I’m perfectly recovered because life is always changing, and different seasons come and go.

But I can say this with confidence:

I trust my body again. I trust God again. And I know that even during my darkest and most fearful nights, I was never alone.

I’m currently part of the Fearless Sleep community, and I’m still learning and walking through this process of insomnia recovery. If you or someone you know is going through insomnia, I would encourage you to check out Fearless Sleep and the Sleep Coach School.

The Sleep Coach School also has so many helpful resources and YouTube videos that explain insomnia, fear of wakefulness, and the recovery process in a way that has helped me understand my own experience so much better.