Pages From Me

Jolting awake to the alarm beside my bed, I let out a quick yawn while stretching my sleepy arms across the bedside table to turn it off. It’s 6 a.m. again, I thought. Time to pray — but honestly, I was more eager to check if he had sent me a text than to speak with the One who woke me up and gave me breath.

“Ptss… mtcheww, like it’ll be any different,” I muttered in frustration as I flung the phone to the other side of the bed.

Adjusting the duvet properly over my body, I made up my mind to continue sleeping. Why bother staying awake when there are no messages to reply? I thought.

I went back to sleep, forgetting I hadn’t prayed. No — I actually remembered; after all, that was the purpose of the alarm. The moment it rang, I knew I was supposed to be praying. But I just wasn’t in the mood. Not even the absence of a text, which could have brightened my morning, was enough to push me to pray.

It was 9:56 a.m. when I finally woke up, already late for my morning lecture. The class was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., and there I was, lazily getting up just four minutes before. I had barely 30 minutes to prepare, yet even that wasn’t enough — I still used extra minutes before leaving the house at 10:30 a.m.

Standing at the edge of the tarred road, I flagged down passing vehicles while glancing repeatedly at my watch with every minute that passed.

I had a presentation immediately after the first class, so I was far more worried about that than the lecture I was already late for.

Bang! was the last thing I heard before everything went dark and I hit the hard floor, my head crashing against the ground.

I had a long dream. In it, I watched myself go about my daily routine. I woke up to my alarm, turned it off immediately, and reached for my phone to see if there was a text. If there wasn’t, I would fling the phone aside and return to sleep. If there was, I grinned from ear to ear and replied — then stayed awake much longer before going back to bed. All this, yet still ignoring the very reason the alarm rang.

Then I saw the rest of my routine: waking late, rushing for lectures, coming back home, eating, sleeping, watching movies, sleeping again, eating, watching more movies, and sleeping once more.

Then something else appeared. There were large transparent vessels with my name on them — four of them. Above my name on the first was written Prayers. The second: Bible Study. The third: Fasting. The fourth: Fellowship. Because the vessels were transparent, I could see inside them. All of them were empty.

Then I saw someone clothed in white. I couldn’t look at Him properly because the light around Him was too bright. He moved toward the vessels, then walked toward my unconscious body lying on a hospital bed, with drips in my veins and oxygen on my nostrils. I moved closer. From the other side of the room, I could finally see His face — or at least His eyes. They were sad. And then He left.

I saw Him again, this time across another hospital bed. A lady was lying there, unconscious as well. Her own vessels were there too — and they weren’t empty. They weren’t full either, but they were more than halfway filled. I watched as the Man in white approached her vessels, then placed His hand gently over her head. His eyes weren’t sad this time; they were joyful, with a tint of gladness. Immediately, the reading on her machine changed.

And then I woke up. But the silence around me was nothing compared to the weight of what I had just seen.