At 2:20 A.M.

 I awake in the early morning at 2:20 a.m. 

The sky is a freeway of lightening bolts and a cauldron of angry thunder. I  watch the sky from bed trying to go back to sleep. But the rain begins. It slaps the windows, the roof, and the tin in the rain gutters. Earth is a noisy place. 

I read for a short while. I think about listening to a meditation. I get out of bed to watch the world through the big windows. Surely the torrents of rain will wash this house off the hill. Or so it seems. Just like it has for the last twenty-five years in the midst of fierce pounding  rain,

Not much I can do about it at 2:40 a.m.

I go back to bed, and do the one sure thing that finally helps me back to sleep. Something I learned in the after-chatter of book club.

We were talking about this very thing: getting back to sleep. It was when Kate taught us about having a mantra--a repeated phrase on a continual cycle. She shared her chosen mantra. With so much time behind, recalling it a year later, it sounded like "Ma ron doe. Ma ron doe." Kate explained it was sanskrit for ---that I don't remember. Something soothing. 

But the phrase lacked meaning for me.

And that is why in the early morning  hours of a storm, wanting to fall asleep, I repeat the phrase, "Let God prevail. Let God prevail."

And I awake always, from a deep slumber, grateful to the house still standing on the hill.