The children’s singer-lyricist Raffi first published the song in 1976. He’s got dozens of children’s tunes, but I know this one, “Brush Your Teeth,” by heart. I know it because my son introduced me to it during one of our visits to his little family. While putting his two-year-old daughter, Stella, to bed, he sings it to her as he teaches her to brush her teeth. Stella’s mother, Kayla, texted me a picture of Stella, a toothbrush engulfed in her smile, mouth overflowing with toothpaste, and eyes saying, “Come sing it with me.”
“When you wake up in the morning, it’s a quarter to one
And you want to have a little fun
You brush your teeth, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
You brush your teeth, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
The lyrics rhyme with the early morning hours until a quarter to five when “you just can’t wait to come alive.”
I keep thinking of how I could rhyme one of the hours with “worry” because that’s what I am prone to do when I awake between a quarter to one and a quarter to five. I wish I could brush worries away as simply as ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. But from my back molars to my front cuspids, worry oozes all over me, like sugar from candy with all its cavity-causing bacteria. Sometimes, I toss and turn until I give up about a quarter to five when it’s time to come alive, all the wearier from my futile attempts to brush those worries away.
It’s much easier to be a prayer warrior during the day than between a quarter to one and five at night when the temptation is to become a prayer worrier. The hours between 1 and 5 magnify anything remotely resembling a negative consequence.
During the day, I boldly fend off potential problems with a dose of sound reason coupled with a prescription for prayer. But in the middle of the night, I’m wearied. My mental and spiritual defenses are vulnerable to attack. I say to myself, “If I keep thinking about this, I’ll be tired, and you know adequate sleep is necessary for good health,” and with that thought, all the worries of health crawl out from under the bedcovers, accompanied by an array of other anxiety-enhancing thoughts: finances; global warming; safety of children and grandchildren; world conflicts—not to mention whether the dry cleaners has lost my favorite slacks.
Thank goodness I found a solution.
When worries, usually arriving with the aplomb of Attila the Hun, ring my doorbell at night, demanding immediate entrance, I’ve learned not to answer. That doesn’t mean they go away. So, I let Jesus answer the door for me.
And then I hide behind him.
Jesus stands between my worries and my overactive mind. The Scriptures redirect my thinking. I can see, for instance, how the Psalmist responded to anxious thoughts in Psalm 16: “At night my heart instructs me,” he wrote. Instead of mentally hyperventilating, he thanked God: “I will bless the Lord who guides me.” He trusted the Lord with his worries, “You guard all that is mine.”
The Scriptures abound with examples reminding us that worry is not a 21st-century phenomenon. From Jesus’ command not to worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34) to the Apostle Paul’s instructions to the believers in Philippi to release anxieties and instead pray “about everything” while giving thanks to God “for all he has done” (Philippians 4:6), the Scriptures encourage us to be prayer warriors instead of prayer worriers.
What’s the difference? Prayer warriors let God handle the battle; prayer worriers struggle to fight it out themselves. By trusting in God, we quit relying on our power to control the universe, instead letting God transform worries into opportunities. So, paradoxically, the strength to overcome our fears (worries) comes through weakness, resigning ourselves to the power of God. Then, the Lord increases our faith as we thank Him in advance for responding to our cries for help.
And so,
When I wake up in the morning at a quarter to one
You think of everything that has to be done
You trust the Lord
ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
And go back to sleep.