Lessons From Federal Prison: A Jan. 6th Participant On Politics, Humanity, & Faith

Today, I sit down with Daniel Gray to have a raw and grounded conversation about political extremism, personal accountability, addiction, and rebuilding life after incarceration. Mr. Gray shares his firsthand experience surrounding January 6, the legal consequences that followed, and how federal prison became an unexpected catalyst for reflection, humility, and spiritual clarity.

In this episode, we explore how identity collapse, substance abuse, and radicalized thinking can quietly take control of a person’s life. Mr. Gray explains how losing nearly everything forced him to confront his own choices, take responsibility for his actions, and disengage from ideological echo chambers that offered affirmation without wisdom. We also discuss the dangers of outsourcing morality to political movements rather than grounding it in faith, discipline, and truth.

We also discuss Mr. Gray’s memoir, written almost entirely while incarcerated, and the deeper lessons he learned from long-term inmates who found peace, faith, and purpose despite decades behind bars. This episode is not about left versus right—it is about consequences, redemption, and what it truly means to rebuild a life with honesty, accountability, and spiritual direction.

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and for those of you who have not heard recent episodes or you're new to this one, I am on the road traveling. I'm not in my normal studio setup, so I apologize if the audio or visual quality is impacted in any way.

But even while traveling, I wanna make sure these conversations happen because they're super important. Especially today's we're gonna be talking about sleep health, which is vital. In fact, it's one of the most neglected things, uh, I'll say in the world, but especially in America, between. And there's a lot of reasons for that, which we'll get into.

Social media technology, uh. Hustle culture, you know, there's, there's so much that goes into it. And then of course, a lot of times we've had episodes on this show addressing sleep because of. You know, my personal relation to being someone who worked on rotating shift work at a United States military, uh, we've had a lot of first responders talk about it and blue collar workers as well.

So bet whether it's polling, allnighters for college one time becomes. A routine or whether it was rotating shift work that you're having trouble breaking out of, or if it's just mental health impacting your sleep or physical health. We're gonna get into that today with Dr. Benjamin. Long great to have you here to talk about, again, such a crucial conversation and I'm excited to get into it.

But first, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I've been looking forward to this conversation. My name, like you said, Dr. Benjamin Long. I am a sleep medicine physician. Also a similar connection. I spent most of my career up until this point in the United States Air Force as a.

Sleep medicine doctor in the military. Um, but right now I'm participating in a program called the Career Intermission Program, where you essentially can take a break from active duty service for a few years. And one of those reasons was because I wrote a book and wanted to be able to, um, not sacrifice my time at the, my full-time job in order to Right, um, promote the book.

So. That is a little about me. I am in San Antonio, Texas. I have, uh, my, uh, wife, we've been married with, uh, for each other for about 12 years, 13 years. I'm about to get myself in trouble. And then my son, he is 10 years old, and then our dog Rolo. Um, and yeah, I. For actually for a long time thought I would just be a general pediatrician.

That's my primary training is focusing on kids. But then kind of later into my training, I discovered sleep medicine, fell in love with it, and haven't really looked back since. Always say the longer date, because then you can just say, man, it's only been that long. I could have Swo. It just feels like I've known you forever and I've loved you so long.

You, you know, you can kind of backpedal. Right? Right. If you say less time, they're gonna say, you think we've only been together that long? Like, what am I to? Right. So always, always give the longer one. Right. You know, that's, that's our first piece of advice from this episode. But yeah. So you were in the, in the Air Force now.

How did that work? You know, why did you join and what got you into that branch? Yeah, my, I tell people I kind of just smooshed my grandfather and my dad's careers together and like that's what I wanted to do. My dad was a pilot in the Air Force. Mm. He actually started Army and then, uh, flew Huey Helicopters, medevac, um, and then got out of the military.

And then in the early two thousands when. Um, they were needing pilots again. Um, they recruited him to come over to the Air Force. He had been in the Air Force prior to that. Um, but that was, I think a lot before I was born. But anyways, he was pilot in the military. Um, and for a portion of my life I spent move into different bases.

And then my grandfather was a pediatrician, so I kind of just felt like medicine and then military. And that was just like the natural. Path. And then for people who are interested in pursuing medicine, military has what's called the Health Profession Scholarship Program, where they will pay for your medical school in exchange for military service.

And so since at the time I was anticipating going into a, um, lower paying specialty, I didn't wanna have this mountain of medical school debt. To have to overcome. So that was a big reason for me was to not only, uh, serve, but also just financially as well. And so as I continued on that trajectory too, I just, you know, have had the privilege of knowing a lot of military families and walking with them as their kids are getting older in the general pediatrics clinic and.

Frequently, you know, military families, you are separated from your support system geographically and demanding schedules. Um, really no matter what your A FSC is in the military, you're gonna have some kind of demands. Um, and it's. When they've done research on sleep deprivation, if you just compare same person, but in the military versus out of the military, right?

In the military is always more sleep deprived. Um, and so then a big piece of the puzzle for me as a pediatric sleep doctor, that's my niche. I do all ages for sleep. But my niche that I feel is pediatric sleep. It makes sense that if a kid is not sleeping, then that service member who's a parent is not sleeping, and then it's gonna be a lot harder for them to do their mission.

And so my job is to come support the whole family and let's see if we can get the kid to sleep better so the service member can sleep better so that way we can accomplish the mission better. Hmm. So when you say, you know, pediatric sleep medicine, what age range is that specifically? Yeah, most often it is, it could be all the way down to birth.

Most of the time I'm talking to family is closer to the four to six month old mark. 'cause that's usually the earliest that you could start doing sleep training for most people. Right. And that's kind of the, the first conversations I'm having and then all the way really up to somewhere in that 18 to 21-year-old range would probably classify as pediatric sleep.

Um, as you're getting into adolescence and you know, even once you're like. 15, 16, there's not necessarily something super magical that happens at 18. So a lot of my adolescents have a lot of similar kind of barriers to good sleep. Um, and so it can be anything from looking at their circadian rhythm. 'cause sometimes that's a little bit later and um, some teenagers are more naturally night owl.

And trying to work out how that's going to work with them for their school schedule and the demands that they have for them versus insomnia. Whether that is I'm doing too many energy drinks, or I have all this homework, or I have all this, like, you know, I'm just using my screens up until bedtime. So, uh, definitely as kids get older in different ages, then there are these unique barriers that as a pediatric sleep doctor, that's my expertise.

So you're not just intervention, but prevention with setting up, you know, those young, young ones for healthy sleep that they will hopefully take into, uh, you know, their childhood as they continue to develop and grow. And then, you know, you mentioned energy drinks is especially huge among the military audience and college as well.

You know, we've seen a shift in. You know what was primarily coffee dominated to now energy drinks and coffee or one or the other. And I've talked before about the very unhealthy toxic culture of a lot of, especially I feel like military males specifically have this, like who can drink more energy drinks?

And I've seen it in high. Schoolers too. You know, just like, oh. It became almost like bragging rights if whoever slept the least was the most successful. Like we've equated, not sleeping to success, because the idea is that if you're not sleeping, you are performing more. However, the quality of that performance is where the success should be measured, not the quantity, because you could be not sleeping and performing poorly.

And that's still more than other people. So I think that's a huge misconception. But, you know, with this, you know, I, for lack of better words, hustle culture that we have, which is, you know, do more and more and more. Um, on one side, on the other side, you mentioned, you know, the doom scrolling in the bed rot, which is mm-hmm.

Sleep deprivation with really no success in my personal opinion. Right. It's just a, a waste of productive time. I mean, what. I want kind of unpack that more like the biggest challenges you're seeing in adolescents especially that we as parents or mentors or family members can look out for and try to address, and what is the proper way to address it.

Absolutely. That's a fantastic question. Um, I'll say one that I've done, gosh, maybe 15 other interviews in the past month or so, and no one's asked me that. So, uh, kudos on that. Thank you. But I will say one of the biggest things and teens definitely is that screen use social media. That is a really huge cultural phenomenon that's going on.

If you're looking at the research of. Instances of pediatric sexually transmitted diseases that's going down. Instances of smoking or vaping is going down. Incident of, uh, alcohol use is going down. And some people have tried to point at that and say like, wow, look at like how amazing this is. And really the flip side of that is that.

Teenagers are not in third spaces or in physical spaces because so much of their life is online right now. Uh, and so it's, it's more common for, if I'm talking to a teenager, one assessment that we'll do is called a heads assessment. We ask how are things at home, at school activities, right? Due to new drugs, sleep and uh, sex and suicidality, things of that nature.

And so, um, what we're noticing more is like. Teenagers are engaging in these high risk behaviors a lot less, but it's also due to the fact that they are just not going out. You know, I actually just heard a recent survey study that talked about, uh, polling seniors in high school, asking them if they have even just dated and back in like the.

I think it was the nineties, it was like 83% had said that they had dated at some point in their teenage life and that has like shifted down to 60%. Um, so a big jump in that these personal relationships that were very normal in, uh, adolescent culture has. Had a significant shift in them. And that's going to impact even to your sleep as well.

Because if you are online so much, especially if you have schoolwork, extracurricular activities or all these other things, then it's just the evening when you have time to either veg out or to connect with, you know, if you play video games and connect with your friends online or play something online.

And so I think, um. It's a understanding that like social dynamic that's happening, I think is a big thing because that is also just going to not only impact your sleep, but overall just like mental health, wellbeing and things of that nature. So getting back to like sleep specifically, I think a very common one that I hinted at was being more of a night owl and adolescence.

There is a natural shift in your circadian rhythm that is going to be later in the night that we think happens sometimes kind of around puberty. Hmm. And so because of that, uh, child who's normally sleeping, um, maybe at like nine o'clock all of a sudden, can't go to bed until midnight, and oftentimes in the past that has been labeled as insomnia.

And really what it is, is that it's a misalignment between when their body wants to sleep and then socially when they need to fall asleep to wake up for school. Right? And so my job as a sleep doctor is. How to kind of tease that out a little bit. Because if you get labeled with insomnia, but it's your circadian rhythm, that's the problem.

Then those are two different kind of treatments that we are, are going down. So there are some unique, uh. Instances of sleep issues in adolescents, and that doesn't even bring up the whole school start time. And there's more of an advocacy within the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to have a later school start time because of that delay that we know happens.

It happens naturally in most teenagers that it's a slight shift. You know, it might be more from like nine to 10:00 PM kind of a thing, but we know that there is a portion of it that it's even later. And that's when we start talking about it as a, as a disorder, quote unquote. So do we. Yet understand the calls behind why this shift happens on the, on the, you know, the science and genetic side of it.

What would cause this or why it's happening? Yeah, there's some, you know, um. Evolutionary biology thoughts process behind it that as you are going through puberty and they're going to be more in a hunter gatherer society would make sense of our biology was such that there was a certain, you know, portion of the younger population that could stay awake later in order to protect us as a tribe or as a group.

I think that is the like sociological or anthropological explanation for why that might be the case. Um, and, and some of it also has to do with the amount of sleep pressure that builds. That seems to also slightly change as well. And so the, the regulation of your sleep is, we think about it in two processes.

You have sleep pressure, which you can think about from the minute you wake up. That just builds and builds and builds outta the slope, kind of going up until you fall asleep. And that kind of comes down. Rough estimate. Talk about that as like adenosine, that builds up in your brain. So if you go back to your high school biology class, you might remember a TP is the thing that our cells use to make energy.

And as the body is doing, it's kind of chemical reactions that a TP gets breaking down to adenosine and then adenosine diphosphate. So you can roughly think of that a buildup of adenosine is you're getting more and more and more kind of stress in the cell. And then eventually that your brain or all of your cells have to do something with that adenosine that has built up, and that is what is, uh, happening during sleep.

And then when we're talking about caffeine, the reason why caffeine works is it actually blocks your adenosine receptor. So a misnomer for caffeine is often people think that it should make you more awake, but actually it doesn't. Stimulate you in that same kind of sense, and that it's actually just blocking your sleepiness perception essentially.

Which is why once that caffeine is done and out of your body, then you're, if you haven't slept or you haven't done anything to kind of help with your sleepiness, then it's coming back with a vengeance. Right. For sure. And then one thing I also want to clarify for people listening is you talked about, you know, the initial assessment is really what's going on at home, at school, and, and you know, mental health wise.

If someone is struggling with mental health, especially with suicidal ideation, are you qualified to discuss that with them or do you have to refer them to a third party? Yeah. I would say all physicians nowadays, at some level we suicidality can happen with anybody. So I think most of us are comfortable with at least having an initial kind of conversation to see, okay, what's, what's happening here?

Or maybe I should say my background training as a general pediatrician, we have a lot of children who come, unfortunately to our just general pediatrics clinic and are suicidal. Mm-hmm. And so we, we. We have to triage that in some ways to see what this means. 'cause off another thing that has shifted in that, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but just my experience personally.

I have had over the course of my even short career younger children coming in who are reporting that they're feeling suicidal. A hundred percent part of the, yeah, and part of the issue though, is oftentimes what I have found is that there are some children who are saying these things, but then. Yet, they don't even know what it means to be suicidal, but they, you know, they will say stuff like they are going to hurt themselves or kill themselves or something because they know that it gets some kind of reaction from their parents.

But then once you start talking to them, then you're getting a totally different story. So there's some of that where us as pediatricians understanding developmental. Right stages of figuring out, okay, like what are you actually talking about here? Um, but majority of the time to make sure that that child is safe, um, and to, um.

Make sure that the family is stable and stuff. We usually will have a mental health counterpart, whether a psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor, or someone who comes in to be able to help create a safety plan or might even have to, um, move them over to the er. So that is something that I think as physicians, it's just anyone can walk into your office and mental health doesn't stop at the door.

Right. So you have to be able to have a protocol to address that. For sure. I 100% agree. I've guessed on several shows, and even on this show I've shared about the statistics for children and suicide, which a lot of, of the, uh, companies that run these statistics consider childhood up to 25 for these mm-hmm.

Statistics. Right. And you look up the interesting shifts, which is from like. As young as 10 years old, sometimes younger, but around 10 years old, which to me is truly sad that you have children who are suicidal. Like you said, you have to decipher through, you know, what are they actually expressing. But for the ones that truly are, which I, you know, we've seen, it's really sad that it's gotten to the point with social media, with cyber bullying, with, uh, bad family dynamics that children are feeling that.

And it's definitely also. For lack of better words, it's more accessible slash in inspired in them because of their access to technology. They've seen these words more, right? As we have more mental health movements, suicide is a much more talked about topic and I don't think, think that. It inspires people.

Right. But it does put it in their mind, like, we know this word, we know what self harm is and stuff it like even when I was in high school, it was trending for young women to cut themselves, not for suicidal ideation or self harm, but just for attention. Or like it is trending. Like, Hey, are you the only one of our friend group who isn't gonna cut herself?

Which is terrible social pressure. And, and, and. It's not the only online trend we've seen that was harmful to people, that people participated. In fact, when I was going into the military, people were eating Tide Pods. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure how many of y'all listening are familiar with that, but people were eating Tide pods.

All right. Sometimes people, you. Just spread and encourage terrible ideas. But I wanna bring it back to say from age 10 to about 18, it was mainly young, uh, women and young girls who were self-harming and maybe attempting suicide but not completed. And then from 1825, the majority of those were men and they were completed suicides.

Um, so seeing those statistics was interesting and it really gave insight into, from 10 to 18, it was really young women and girls because of. The way self image is during that, that phase, uh, the way high schoolers and college girls interact with one another and then the family dynamic. And then from 1825 is when.

Young boys become, you know, men and off or on their own oftentimes, and they have to deal with all the pressures and responsibilities suddenly of being a man, which as a young boy, you know, is not there as much. So to see these statistics, I think it is truly sad. But I like something you said, which is, you know.

Mental health issues don't stop at the door, uh, whether you're that type of doctor or not. And I think, you know, it's so important for parents to be checking in on their children now more than ever about this kind of stuff. And it can be a very difficult conversation to have, but it's a necessary one.

And then I want to address, you know, all this doom scrolling and, and time before bed. What would you say? I know a lot of. Doctors and other, you know, researchers have put out different times. What have you found is the best timeline for, uh, you know, a period of time away from your phone, prior to bed? Is it one hour, two hours?

Is there a magic number? Is it a really personal thing? Like how does that work? Absolutely. I would say there's probably not a single magic number that's going to. Be the absolute best for every single person. There's probably like a rough, good, 30 minutes to an hour is a reasonable amount of time, but it depends on like what are you engaging in, what are you seeing, how is it making you feel?

And all of those different factors are going to impact how, um. Early you need to set down your cell phone, so if you are getting really anxious with your screen use, then probably a lot earlier. You need to put that down and make sure that you are calming down and getting to a good point before you fall asleep.

Compared to someone who is using their phone and maybe they aren't feeling quite as stressed, but they're just, they really want to be productive, and so they're just trying to do more things, but it's easier for them to calm down. Those are two totally different scenarios where I would say maybe this person might need closer to an hour or two hours, whereas this person might need closer to 30 minutes to an hour.

So I do think it is individualized, and I think that's often what people think about when we're talking about insomnia is usually sleep hygiene. Unfortunately, the problem with sleep hygiene is it only fixes bad sleep hygiene. It doesn't actually address the root causes for insomnia. And so it, most people are actually really surprised when I tell them I'm a sleep doctor.

But all that stuff of like, what's the temperature of your bedroom, how much light exposure, um, your screen time use. All of those kind of things. I really don't even talk about them until closer to like maybe my third or fourth follow up. Um, and so really as a sleep doctor, we want to get it to the root of those problems.

And we know that there are certain maladaptive behaviors for insomnia that are going to perpetuate that, that we are trying to break in our therapy. Hmm. I can definitely agree with that. The root cause is, is much more important than those, all those little factors, of course, those contribute and I think sleep hygiene has, you know, generationally gotten worse because a lot of people like to work from their bed.

They're on their laptop, on their bed, their phone, on their bed. And you know, that separation makes such a big difference because honestly, I, you know, that was something that unfortunately, you know, in the military barracks room I had, I just had, you know, the bed and I had to set up a little desk because mm-hmm.

I was trying to work on my bed and I would just fall asleep. And then also I was, when I would try to sleep, I felt like it was time to work. And so separating that changed a lot for me. But like you mentioned, that root cause is, is a huge thing and I want to get into. Your book you mentioned earlier, you know, working on your book, taking time off to focus solely on on that and a promotion of that.

And obviously it's something very beneficial to us, uh, reflective of this conversation. So I'd love for you to share a little bit more about that. Yeah, so when we're talking about insomnia, that's really what I'm trying to get at. In my book called Sleep Habits Journals, the subtitle is Practices, prayers and Devotions to Ease Your Sleepless Nights.

And so my particular interest in niche beyond just pediatric sleep medicine is I'm also really interested in the intersection of theology and spirituality with sleep medicine. I wanted to create a resource that brought those two worlds together to really help specifically Christians. Really anyone who's open to a kind of Christian worldview or perspective could access, you know, like could use the book with some success probably, but it.

Came from walking alongside people who are experiencing sleeplessness, who themselves said that they're Christian. I would, they would tell me that they read their Bible, they pray and do things like that. But then when I asked how their religious identity impacts, how they respond to their insomnia, and most people just kinda looked at me like.

I don't know, you know, like, um, I'm not sure. I haven't really thought of that before. And yet what I found is that so often the, the supplemental things that we have in therapy for insomnia, like guided imagery, deep breathing, yoga and meditation, and these other things that they're good to kind of help out when, once you're getting to the root problem.

But for people who are coming from a Christian worldview, then that may not be something that is. Appeasing to them or something that is easily incorporated into their lifestyle compared to utilizing the natural tools that their religion gives to them. And so some of it was from that to better serve my patients.

But then the flip side too, I myself am a Christian from a Christian faith tradition. And so it also was my own journey of trying to figure out how do I kind of put these two parts of myself together, uh, in a way that is, um, you know. Being true to myself, but also in a way that is beneficial for my patients, isn't a hindrance to my patients or anything like that.

And so the Sleep Habits Journal is centered around what I call the sleepless night Rules for anyone who's ever done cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, they're gonna sound really familiar 'cause they're based off of what's called the stimulus control instructions. Exactly what you were just talking about.

Very often people will do work in their bed or other things in their bed, and you can condition yourself to associate your bed as a place where you're supposed to be awake. So what you intuited where you're like, I need to separate these spaces and the bed needs to be for sleep, and then I can work in a chair or a desk or something on the other side of this room is really important for us because.

If your bed is both a place that you sometimes eat, sometimes sleep, sometimes worry, sometimes work, then that can send a lot of different signals to your brain. So we try to simplify that. And the best way to do that is to make sure you're only using your bed for sleep. For people who are sexually active, we'll usually say sleep and sex as well.

And so for the Sleep Habits Journal, the five Sleepless Night Rules are ceased before bed and. Wait to feel sleepy. So you know, actually drawing a line in the sand if you're a super productive person. So that way you're actually committing to a bedtime. Many people will commit to, I need to wake up at this time, but that bedtime kind of waxes and wanes.

Mm. So one step is really just drawing that line in the sand saying, this is when I'm going to transition to bed. And then also waiting until you feel sleepy to actually get into bed. If you're just like, I'm laying down because it is eight 30 and I lie down at eight 30, but I'm wide awake, you're not doing any.

Thing good for yourself. So if it's past your bedtime, but you're not feeling sleepy yet, sitting in a chair or doing something while you're waiting, and so oftentimes from a Christian worldview, I'm telling people, you can engage in prayer, bible reading, or do things to connect with God. Then you wait, feel sleepy, lie down, and then if you can't fall asleep, rise out of bed.

That's a really difficult one for a lot of people too, because they're like, doc, I'm trying to sleep, so why would I get out of bed if I'm trying to sleep? And it's that connection that you've created. Again, if you are tossing and turning, if. More tossing and turning is not going to make you fall asleep.

We kind of trick our brains to think that because intermittently, eventually you do fall asleep after tossing and turning. You might toss and turn five times on one night, two times on another night, seven times on one night. But we kind of send a signal to ourselves that it's like, yeah, eventually I will fall asleep.

But that intermittent. Reward isn't actually helping us in the long run. So getting out of the bed so that way the time that you spend in your bed is you're actually asleep. For adults, that efficiency should be sub roughly 85 to 95%. So if you're telling me it takes you, you know, super long time to fall asleep, that's not healthy.

On the flip side, some people are surprised sometimes when they're like, oh, doc, I like my head hits the pillow and I fall asleep within minutes. I'm like. You might actually also be like over exhausted or you know, like too, you're falling asleep too quickly as well too, so, so it is normal for it to take, take you at least like 10, 15 minutes for you to be able to fall asleep.

So if you're south of that, that could be something to also talk about with a physician. But in the book, I'm primarily talking about insomnia. And so if you can't sleep, rise outta bed. And then the third rule is really just to connect with God and wait to feel sleepy again. And then that's really the, the core and the difference from what we typically talk about with stimulus control is just that worldview and what is my meaning, what is my purpose and the goals, and how do I, you know.

The questions with worldviews is like, who am I? How did all this get here? Why are humans the way that we are? Like there's so much, uh, kind of philosophical theological questions in that that we don't always think about that undergirds a lot of our science and worldview and. The places that we are going.

So from the Christian worldview, connecting with God and seeing the sleepless night as an invitation to connect is, is something different that you won't get necessarily in a typical sleep Doctor instructions. And then the fourth rule is really just to repeat. So going back to steps two and three, if you're not able to fall asleep again, when you lay back down, rise outta bed and then connect with God and wait to feel sleepy, and you keep doing that until it's you actually fall asleep.

And then the last one is resist sleeping in and taking naps. And usually that's the point where I lose a lot of people 'cause they're like. Don't take away my naps. I need my naps to be able to fall asleep. And I tell people, you know, I say resist for a reason because it's not that you have to destroy all of that.

Um, but it's about setting some. Guardrails and some boundaries, right? Because that's really the root problem of the insomnia, is the things that perpetuate your insomnia are that sleep again and taking long naps. Because when we're talking about that sleep pressure, those things help you and that you get more energy, but it actually steals away from your sleep pressure to fall asleep night or the next night.

So in the long run, it's actually hurting you. And so there's that education component of that, and I think people realize that. But the. Problem with insomnia for so many people is our lives are so chaotic, full of so many stressors and so many things that it's hard for us to be able to implement these rules and put 'em into place.

And so then that's the purpose of the book. It's sent around those five rules and you can just jump in wherever you could go and order, or you could go to the specific rule that you're having difficulty with. And I like to tell people it's the insomnia book for people who hate to read. Because instead of, you know, you might have read those books where you read a whole chapter and then you have to get to the questions at the end.

And especially if you are like me and you put that down and then you come back like a month later and you're like, wait a second, what are we talking about here? And you've already forgotten all of the other steps and you feel like you have to start all over in order to kind of get back to where you once were.

And then you're just like repeating yourself. The book is set up to be accessible in a way that each chapter is full of these bite-sized interactions and activities, okay? That are designed to kind of get you just one step down the road. So that way if you do come back six months later, you remind yourself maybe of the rules, but then it, you could just jump back in wherever you're having difficulty.

Right. And you mentioned the subtitle was practices, prayers and devotions to ease your Sleepless Nights. So there are prayers and devotions in there. Are those, um, a collection of prayers for sleeping, or are these original prayers that you wrote for guided uh, sleeping prayers? Yeah, so some of them, each section does have usually a prayer that I wrote as far as like a prayer for ceasing, a prayer for rising from your bed, a prayer for when you're repeating and trying to, you know, have to do that multiple times in a night.

But then there's also space for you to kind of write your own prayers. There are some historic. Prayers. Um, a very common one is the, um, Jesus prayer. So, um, oftentimes in more recent periods of discussions of Christian spirituality, we connect that to your breath and doing a breath prayer, which is essentially a prayer that you can say within a single breath.

And so the historic Jesus prayer is, um, Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me. And then some traditions add a sinner. Other traditions don't add that at the end. So there is some variability there. But, uh, it comes from a passage in Luke where, uh, uh, beggar named Bartis is calling out to God and he's, you know, saying, Lord Jesus, I think he says son of David in that chapter.

Yeah. Have mercy on me. And so it's that same kind of thing that you're, you're in this place. Insomnia can be such an isolating experience for people. So really just crying out for mercy and, you know, that really gets to, well, what, what does the Bible have to say about sleep? Or why even do this? You know, I think some people from, uh, you know, not a religious background might be like, might feel like I'm muddying the waters a little bit.

Like I'm trying to mix oil and water a little bit here. But really all of us, whether we realize it or not, are operating out of some kind of theology. Theology seems like this weird loosey goosey term, but really it's just the study of God and how God has revealed himself and relates to his creation is how we would probably talk about it within Christian theology.

And so. If you, I'm operating out of an atheistic worldview where there is no God and from, you know, the only thing is matter that I can see and feel, and touch, and smell and hear, and all that kind of a thing, then that is going to lead me to ask certain questions, to make certain assumptions about reality and will lead me down.

A path compared to if I believe that there is a God who has created the universe, who is sustaining it, who knows me, loves me, and cares about me, um, cares for my sleep, that's gonna lead me down a totally different path. So, so when that argument of that I might be muddying the waters, I tell people, well actually.

I'm not adding anything new. I'm just bringing to the forefront what all of us are already holding within ourselves is that we have certain beliefs around whether there is a God and how much God is involved or is not involved in creation or things of that nature, and that's gonna impact the paths that we are taking.

And so for the, the book, I'm trying to bring it back to how can, how does the Bible talk about sleep and sleeplessness, right? And how can we maybe like, think about it differently? A hundred percent. I think that's really important. And you know, just interesting fact a lot of people don't realize is it actually takes more faith to be an atheist.

If you look at all the scientific principles, and this is science and math of the alignment of all these numbers, all these numbers that make up the universe, especially around earth. Sustainment of life if they were mm-hmm. Sometimes as much as 0.0 0, 0 0 1 different, there would be no life. It actually takes more faith to believe that everything aligned perfectly than to say someone manually did all this.

Uh, just a fun fact out there. But yeah, you know, I like in your. In your bio online, when I was reading up about you, you know, you describe sleep as a, a gift from God and something that he does want for us. And obviously the big example everyone goes to is even God rested and God doesn't need a rest, right?

So why would he do it as an example? The same reason I say Jesus Christ wept over to death of Lazarus knowing, already knowing he was gonna bring him back to life. So why did he cry? To show that death is a time of mourning, especially for men. You know, I talk about, one of the things I teach is biblical masculinity, which is different from modern masculinity and a lot of toxic masculine people.

You know, the Bible is how I have to argue against them, right? Because we have the perfect man was already here and showed us how to be a good man, right? And it's very different from what people put out to. Today. Right. And especially in terms of humility and versus, uh, flashy masculinity and emotions, right?

Jesus had emotions and he expressed them both sorrow and anger, and showed those, you know, Jesus wept over, you know, the night before he was gonna be crucified. He wept, right? He, he was afraid. You know, it's not. It's is not something to be ashamed of or say I'm not masculine because I have fear, because I have sorrow.

But there was a time and place for it, right? He didn't do it all the time, every day. So I think it's so important in, in both Jesus and God rested and they, and they showed us. Why? Right? It wasn't for them, it was for us, you know? And I mean, God said, you know, Sabbath was made for the man, not man for the Sabbath, right?

Mm-hmm. So I think it's so important. And on that note, what I'd love to end my episodes with whenever I have a faith-based individual is if you could share one Bible quote right now, what would that be? You know, what is on your heart to share with everyone? Yeah. Oh man. There's, there's a lot of good ones, but one of my favorites that I keep coming back to with sleep is Psalm 1 27, and that starts off with, unless the Lord builds the house, the builder is laboring in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen is watching in vain. Then in verse two it is, it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest. And there's one translation I particularly love and describes it as eating the bread of anxious toil for he gives to his beloved sleep. And that really is the key verse that I make that theological claim that sleep is a gift that comes, you know, straight from that psalm that.

Thousands of years ago, before we were way busy and filled up our time with all this technology and had all of this stuff a psalmist was saying, it is totally in vain, my endeavors that I am trying to do, whether that is building a house, watching over in city, unless God is doing that. My participation in that if I think I am completely in control, is a total illusion.

Mm-hmm. And so really, how often do we even say that ourselves, I gotta get up early because I have to do X, Y, or Z, or I can't go to sleep yet because I still have this to do. And the psalmist is talking exactly of that. Like, you are eating the bread of anxious toil, you're doing all of this work and all of this stuff when you're not even realizing the gift that God has given you in sleep.

Mm-hmm. And. And that really flips the narrative of sleep, uh, on its head compared to how we think about sleep. As something that I might need, but it's just this, uh, merely a biological reality and versus the Bible is giving us this idea of sleep as a gift that we receive and that that does something to us because then sleep becomes this embodied trust that I can.

Be transformed more and more into a person of trust. Not to say that the lack of sleep means that you don't trust God. 'cause there's also a psalm or proverb that talks about an evil man can't fall asleep until he's done evil. So that that seems, you know, really weird and counterintuitive. But I think it's to show that tension there and that this isn't magic, it's communication, not manipulation that you're trying to connect with God.

It's a relationship and so we can think. If God cares about me, sleep is a gift, but moving that down into my heart, that takes time and so that's what I'm trying to guide people through in the book, is truly believing that God cares for me and cares for my sleep. I completely agree and we're gonna have your website and the book in the description below where people can also sign up to stay connected with you.

But I think this has been a great conversation, you know, very straightforward and impactful. And I think, you know, when you change your at, like you were saying, when you change your attitude towards sleep and you change how you use it, you really change. Your attitude toward yourself in the long run, because how you respect your sleep is how you respect yourself, and it's how you respect God.

So I, I think that's a beautiful thing, and I, I appreciate what you're doing because like you said, it's not something we find very often. And interestingly enough, a lot of believers who struggle with sleep don't go to God, uh, you know, for, for help with it. Not just insomnia, but people who suffer from extreme night terrors and other sleeping conditions.

You know, we don't think to bring that to God as well. Uh, but you know, we're to bring everything to him. So I really appreciate what you're doing, helping be a catalyst for that. And thank you for your time today. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This was great. I.