Compline: Keep Watch in the Night

Two years ago, I sat in a Johns Hopkins specialist’s office and received news that devastated me.

Later that same day, I went into adrenal crisis.

It was one of the hardest days of my life—a day that left me physically unwell, but even more emotionally undone. It took me months to recover physically. Longer still to begin healing mentally and emotionally. That healing has come slowly, quietly, and unevenly.

During those first fragile days, my mom read Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren aloud to me. Tish writes about how prayer can hold us when we don’t know what to pray. How ancient words can give shape to our pain.

She says these prayers are not “tidy little antidotes for pain,” but light in darkness. And that’s what they became for me. Especially this one from Compline:

“Keep watch, Dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.

Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

This became my nighttime prayer—a way to sit with pain and still hold onto hope.

It reminded me that I wasn’t alone in my suffering.

Hard anniversaries have a way of sneaking up on us. They remind us where we’ve been. But they also point to how far we’ve come.

If you’re marking a hard day, I hope you know this:

You are not weak for remembering.
You are not behind for still healing.
You are not alone in the dark.

There is grace here too. There is strength. There is still joy.

And there is a God who keeps watch, even in the night.

🌙 Adventure as you are.