I have a watch that tracks my sleep.

My sleep patterns are those of a small child. Pretty much by 8 pm, I’m down for the count. If not literally in bed, I’m on my way. So, when there is a meeting at 7 – it’s a rough night for me. 🙂

It’s a LATE NIGHT if I go to bed after 9.

I wake up at 5, ready to conquer the day.

Except recently.

I still wake up powerfully early because I go to bed as a 6-month-old, but have struggled being “ready for the day.”

Yesterday I was scrolling through my health app on my phone and noticed that what I thought was a good night’s sleep actually isn’t at all. There isn’t a night I sleep more than 6 hours. I wake up at 3 and then my brain takes off. Thinking of all the things that need to be done. Trying to figure out answers to some of the challenges facing me in work.

It’s like my mind drags tomorrow into today and demands I solve all of it at once.

And without realizing it…

my body is clenched.

My soul is clenched.

My heart is clenched.

That’s where this first posture of practicing gratitude comes in:

1) Open Your Hands

At 3 a.m., my brain is convinced it’s responsible for holding the world together.

Every detail.

Every decision.

Every outcome.

It stacks my worries into a skyscraper and then tells me,

“Don’t let it fall.”

No wonder I can’t go back to sleep.

But gratitude begins where the gripping ends.

Sometimes the first prayer isn’t words — it’s posture.

Literally opening my hands on top of the covers.

Not as some magic spell to knock me out again,

but as a physical reminder that I am not the one running the universe.

When my fists unclench, my breath follows.

My shoulders drop.

My heart loosens its hold.

Opening my hands is how I say:

“I don’t have to carry every unknown tonight.

I don’t have to solve this before sunrise.

God, I trust You with what I cannot control.”

Paul learned contentment in a prison cell —

not when life was tidy,

but when life was unraveling around him.

And maybe that’s where the lesson lives for us too —

not when everything feels manageable,

but when the dark is loud and our brains are racing.

So if 3 a.m. finds you staring at the ceiling…

open your hands.

Let the night hold what you cannot.

Let God carry what your mind keeps returning to.

Hands open.

Heart open.

Not because everything is peaceful,

but because gratitude helps us loosen our grip on what was never ours to hold.

Maybe the journey back to rest — and back to gratitude —

begins with slowly prying our fingers off the illusion of control

and letting grace do the holding.

Dawn, our Connections Catalyst and truly a Soul Creations master, has a beautiful practice.

When she prays she does so with palms facing up and open. A posture of openness, of release. And of gratitude.

Maybe we can all try that today.

Grace and Peace,
Andrea