I went to bed at 10:00 last night and at 10:30 I was still awake. And Tim was asleep. I started doing the math...
"Okay, if I fall asleep now I'll still get six and a half hours of sleep - but if I don't fall asleep until midnight, then I'll only get five hours of sleep... that's not enough. Wow, Samara has already had three and a half hours of sleep.... Why can't I fall asleep?!"
As I toss and turn my brain searches for a thought to catch on... something mundane and multi-faceted at the same time - so that I don't get worked up or bored. When I get worked up, the buzzing gets louder and the light gets brighter. When I get bored I start thinking about thinking - which is the worst.
Last night I got out of bed at 11:30 after an hour of getting progressively more awake. I bopped around on line for a while, and then I picked up John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted- a book I'm reading in preparation for Calvin Seminary's Facing Your Future program this summer. This little story calmed me a good deal:
Richard Foster writes of a friend walking through a shopping mall with his two-year-old son. The boy was cranky and out of sorts, and nothing the father did would settle him down.
When nothing else works the father finally picks his son up, holds him in his arms, and begins to sing to him a song that he makes up as he goes along: "I love you. I love the way you laugh. I'm glad I get to be your dad."
Suddenly this song does what nothing else could. His son's eyes get wide, his mouth closes and grins, he nestles into his father's chest and listens all the way out to the car.
When his father puts him into the car seat and buckles him in, his son throws out his arms and says, "Sing it to me again, Daddy. Sing it again."
Prayer is like that. With simplicity of heart we allow ourselves to be gathered up into the arms of the Father and let him sing his love song over us.
Sing it again.
I'd like to say that I drifted right off to sleep after reading that and that in no way did I proceed to wake Tim up and cry for a while (not unlike a cranky two year old) before tossing two more hours until I finally fell asleep around 2:30... But I can't say that. The night didn't get magically better.
But I was comforted by the thought of God gathering me up and singing over me. And I think I finally fell asleep as I was saying over and over again in my head the breath prayer that usually accompanies my final restless wakeful moments:
"God, I receive the gift of sleep from you whenever you might send it."
Sleep is a gift...
...a gathering up of thoughts and anxieties into a singularity.
...a love song.
3 comments:
How beautiful! Funny, after a good year or so with no insomnia to speak of, it's come back to haunt me, too. So frustrating! The other day I decorated Chloe's room in my head to settle down and it worked great... but last night, running through the steps we need to do in order to finish the basement in order to sell the house just exacerbated the problem. :)
Do you want a little advice from a fellow insomniac? :) When my insomnia gets bad I find it helpful to write a list of what's on my mind. By writing it down I know I wont forget about it and then I can worry about it in the morning. This doesn't always work,but it does help.
Other things I've found helpful is an evening walk, knitting or laundry or something of the sort and if worse comes to worse Unisom 30 minutes before I want to go to sleep.
Karla
I had insomnia last night too! All of my activities and stresses came to haunt me as I lay there. I decorate houses in my head when I can't sleep. Think of the layout of a house (not your own) and imagine that you can decorate it any way you want. If I can truly get into it, its a silly little exercise that works for me every time.
Post a Comment