I should be sleeping...

It is now almost 3:00 am, and though on any "normal" night I might have awakened at this hour after several hours of sleep and been unable to get back to sleep, tonight (this morning, actually) I have yet to go to bed. I am just too wired. I was absolutely exhausted (and could have fallen asleep in about two minutes) when we sat down with the two older kids to watch the third of the "Bourne" movies at 9:05. Two batches of popcorn-brewing (the first one was accidentally ruined by a salt shaker with a faulty top) and a spilled Mountain Dew later (spilled by my son - all over me, the couch, and the floor), we finally got started around 9:30 or so. After all the pausings for potty breaks and answerings of queries ("Who is that guy?" and "Why did she do that?" and "Wait, I'm really confused" and "Do CIA guys really do stuff like that?!"), it was midnight when we finally finished. Of course, after a movie like that, I was wide awake. I cleaned up the snack mess in the kitchen. I took out the dog. I chatted with my husband until he began snoring. I lay in bed thinking about the movie, and the day, and tomorrow, and life...

Eventually I gave up on sleepiness and got up and came up here to the computer. I've composed a letter to the parent of a student I'm tutoring, gotten the junk email that has arrived since this morning, and read the blog of a dear friend walking through the painful experience of carrying a terminally-ill baby with Trisomy 18. (See Heidi's Blog) And now I've jumped on here for a little note. Eventually I am going to have to lie down and try again to find a place of sleepiness. My children will be getting up in just a few short hours.

In the meantime, what great insights and lessons are there in the "Bourne" movies? I have no idea, but I do find that I am really happy that he was resistant to the program back at the beginning (once he knew what it was), and that in the end he was able to finally declare that he was "no longer Jason Bourne." There is something redemptive in his journey, and in the final place he landed.

Oh, to have hope that we don't have to continue forever to be the awful things we don't want to keep being! Sometimes my heart screams, "Is it possible? Is full redemption really coming one day?" I am comforted by Philippians 1:6, "...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." How glorious that day will be!

I think of the lyrics to a Chris Rice song: "Freedom from myself will be the sweetest rest I've ever known." It is from the song "Prone to Wander."

On the surface not a ripple
Undercurrent wages war
Quiet in the sanctuary
Sin is crouching at my door

How can I be so prone to wander
So prone to leave You
So prone to die
And how can You be so full of mercy
You race to meet me and bring me back to life

I wake to find my soul in fragments
Given to a thousand loves
But only One will have no rival
Hangs to heal me, spills His blood

How can I be so prone to wander
So prone to leave You
So prone to die
And how can You be so full of mercy
You race to meet me and bring me back to life

Curse-reversing Day of Jesus
When you finally seize my soul
Freedom from myself will be the
Sweetest rest I’ve ever known

How can I be so prone to wander
So prone to leave You
So prone to die
And how can You be so full of mercy
You race to meet me and bring my back to life

-from the album "Deep Enough to Dream"
Listen here

Has it really been ten years since that album came out?!! You can see my last post for my feelings about THAT!