Suffer the consequences of one's actions. For example, It's unfortunate that it turned out badly, but Sara made her bed and now she must lie in it . The earliest English citation for this oft-repeated proverb is in Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia (c. 1590): "Let them . . . go to their bed, as themselves shall make it." The idiom alludes to times when a permanent bed was a luxury, and most people had to stuff a sack with straw every night for use as a bed. There are equivalents in French, German, Danish, and many other languages.