I THINK I AM….
I think I am very lucky when it comes to sleep.
By the time I go to bed and try to read—my favorite time of day—I am quickly sliding into a coma. Most of the time, I don’t get a page read before I wake up, my glasses are sideways, my phone is somewhere, and whatever book I was reading is closed, with me having no idea where I was in the book.
I sleep on my side, patenting the Perfect Sleeping Position or, PSP to you non-patent pending people. It’s a two or three pillow clutch, holding them with your arms wrapped around them and your legs scissored. After a while, about one REM cycle, I roll to the other side and repeat. Now, at this season of my life, I get up and use the bathroom, then return, trying to remember what side I left off at, as I repeat the steps back to bed, stepping over two dogs, most of the time they are blending in like dog ninjas with the carpet.
But sometimes—
Hmmm….
My brain turns on.
Then, I’m screwed. Apparently, God wants to talk with me and He picks 2:17 in the morning to do so. Apparently, He is on east coast time and didn’t realize this was Mountain Standard Time. Or, He knew where I would be and knew I was a captured audience.
Those times at night
Those times when you wake up, like WAKE UP when your eyes open and your brain is automatically working on bills, birthday presents you didn’t buy, is that a dripping sound I hear?
It’s too early to start the laundry, so you do it anyway. I don’t turn lights on my house, having those little lights you plug in which act like colored channel markers through my house. Sorting laundry in the dark, where light green can look like white and thereby wind up in the wrong pile-with bleach.
But they are rare, much of my life now is calm seas, beautiful sunrises, waiting for orders in need of assistance for shuttles, yard work, counsel, or whiskey. I think the middle of the night conversations, or the occasional pondering the WTF moment which might be happening in the family or world, is a good thing. It gives me the opportunity to run ideas by the Guy who wrote The Plan. He always makes me answer it, the question, whatever that is. I have to figure it out. And none of it includes a clear answer from Him, those Ah-Ha moments. I get a settled direction.
Once I finally answer….
I am not the author of The Plan. My plan is put together with old glue and duct tape that got stuck to itself. My labels on my plan use a felt marker whose shelf life has long since passed. I try to figure whatever I need to do in steps, and lists—I can’t forget the lists.
Then, finally, fatigue comes back. It’s like a switch. “Okay, I’m done talking. Go back to sleep.” And within seconds, it’s over. I look at the clock and as I fade, notice it’s been a couple of hours and I need to wake up in a couple of more.
But almost every time, I wake up as if I didn’t have a laundry break in the middle of the night.
I don’t feel washed out or exhausted. It is as if it was a play I watched, sometimes not even remembering it too place until sometime later. We all have them. Something in the air caused us to be there, at that moment, with Him.
Something.
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