The Night Shift of the Soul

Anxiety has a favorite hour. For most people it arrives somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning — that strange corridor when the defenses are down and the mind spins like a wheel in mud. The biopsy results. The overdue bill. The teenager who hasn't texted back.

A hospice chaplain named David Osei described what he called his "handoff ritual." Every night before leaving his shift, he stood at the quiet nurses' station and wrote down every unresolved burden on a scrap of paper — the patient in room 7 who was frightened, the family that hadn't come, the question he couldn't answer. Then he'd fold the paper, set it on the desk, and say in a whisper: "I've done what I can. The rest is Yours."

He said he learned it from Philippians 4:6. Present your requests. Not ruminate, not suppress, not bargain — present them, the way a patient submits a chart to a surgeon: completely, specifically, and with the trust that Someone far more capable is now holding the case.

What follows, Paul promises, is not the peace that makes sense — not the calm of a resolved problem — but a peace that "surpasses all understanding." A peace that stands guard over the heart like a sentry at the gate, even when every circumstance says it shouldn't be there.