My first 24 hours here in Germany have come and gone, and the themes thus far have definitely been:

• Eat lots
• Sleep lots
• Potty lots
• Needles and pills (lots)

Due to COVId protocols, I’ll be in quarantine for the first week I’m here. Meals and jars of drinking water are left outside my door. Machines and IV drips are wheeled in and out of my room by nurses covered from head to toe. The hours go by slowly in between, and I lay in my bed in my small, tidy room to read a book or write an email or watch the clouds outside my window only to fall asleep, over and over again.

There is a dominant narrative playing out in this Round 3 in which I am utterly dependent on everything and everyone but myself. I have zero control over my schedule, the cruddy internet connection, my diet, the bills, the hives on my ankles and legs. I can’t ask J to grab some aloe vera gel at Target for me, or step outside for a cooling evening walk around the block, or go to the kitchen and make some scrambled eggs for breakfast, or order a yoga mat from Amazon with 2-day Prime delivery, or work a few hours during my downtime. But!–I can eat, potty, sleep, repeat.

I feel like a baby, vulnerable and utterly helpless.

And in so many way, it feels appropriate: that God would strip me of everything I’ve ever had control of (or thought I had control of) in my life and the toxic self-sufficiently that comes with it all, to re-birth me from that humble heap of rubble. It is appropriate that God would remind me in his gentle fatherly manner what my priority is right now and where I must look to for my needs to be met. In my nakedness and hunger, like a typical baby whose only demands are ever to be held and fed, I look to my Abba Father and know he alone always will.

And this reminder is how I will sleep like a baby tonight.