Friday, August 04, 2006

Sleep Debt


I don’t get enough sleep and it’s my own fault.

Once I come home from work, there’s dinner to cook, the kitchen to clean, laundry to do, and anything else that needs our attention. My husband is great to help me, but he can finish loading the dishwasher and go straight to bed. I, however, must have some down time. Some time just to sit and be. Consequently, I crawl into bed too late and am sound asleep within 30 seconds of my head hitting the pillow. Literally.

Unfortunately, I get up rather early, 5:00 a.m., so that usually means about 6 hours of sleep. Sadly, my body really needs 8, so I am usually in debt to sleep. I choose to view it as a blessing that because of my debt, which rolls over with compounding interest from night to night, I cannot relate to the tossing and turning of which many speak.

The other night was a new experience for me.

I fall into bed at 10:44, am asleep by 10:45, only to be awakened at 11:30 with the realization that my youngest, whom I will call Lovie, is not home. I am certain that she will be in by 12:00 as she is very faithful to call when she is out, and has never broken curfew. However, once awake, I am afraid to go to sleep again. Will something happen to her in the next 30 minutes? If she calls, will it wake me? So I stare up at the ceiling in the dark until 12:00. Then, I wander through the house in the dark, only to find her safe at home. With a thankful sigh, I climb back into bed and drift off to sleep once again.

Approximately 45 minutes later, my beloved wakes me. Kindred Spirit is visiting us and her husband is on his way to join her at our house from out of state and has not yet arrived, even though it is an 8 hour trip and he left 12 hours ago. My beloved whispers, “Should I call him to see where he is? Should I wake kindred spirit?” With a groan and a flop to my other side, I mumble, “Sure, call him.” Then I wait in the dark as he calls. Finding out that he is ok, just stuck behind a wreck and taking it slow in the rain, I try, once again, to drift off to sleep. However, there is no drifting to be done. There appear to be pins poking through the mattress into my back. There is no comfortable position.

To complicate matters, a song we sang in church on Sunday plays itself over and over in my head: How Great is our God. Then, the unthinkable happens. I start thinking about work. Not just work. Problems at work. People problems. Unsolvable people problems. For 2 hours and 15 minutes, I am frozen in a supine position, staring straight ahead in the dark, with How Great is our God in the background and unsolvable people problems in the foreground.

At 3:00, fearing that the overpowering brain song will seep out my ears and wake my beloved, I tuck my pillow under my arm and head for the den. I’ll just watch a little TV and then fall asleep. Making my nest on the couch, I aim the remote toward the TV and see the message. You must load your cable access card. I try every channel and get the same message. What does this mean? Have I forgotton to pay the cable bill? So here I am at 3:00 a.m., firing up the computer, going to my bank statement to check. Whew, I paid it two weeks ago, but now I’m really awake.

At this point I am exhausted, brain dead, and frustrated. What is God trying to tell me? Ok, so maybe my prayers are more about thanks for my blessings, and petitions for those in need. Maybe if I will purposefully praise God in prayer, my brain will relax the song. So I begin. I try to think of every adjective that describes God and His majesty. As the seconds turn to minutes and the minutes multiply, I feel my body relax and slip into the deepest two hours of sleep anyone has ever had. How great is our God!

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.”
Psalm 62:1-2


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