Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow will find it hard to sleep tonight!

I am having trouble sleeping these days.

Don't get me wrong. I have no trouble falling asleep. In fact, I'm pretty sure I could fall asleep within two minutes any time, anywhere. If I can lie down in comfort, quiet, and darkness, I can fall asleep. Instantly. When I hit the pillow at night, I'm out like a light. Literally. Boom, I'm gone.

I've even become one of those people I never understood, growing up—the ones I mocked and made fun of. You know the ones: People Who Fall Asleep During Movies. I remember uttering the words, "I don't understand people who fall asleep during movies! I could never do that! I'm too engaged and involved in the story. Even if I don't particularly care for it, I could never sleep during a movie." (Sigh. The list of things I understand now that I never understood in my 20s and 30s grows daily... and exponentially. The attitudes of my former selves toward others over the years, embarrass me!)


No, I have no trouble falling asleep.
My trouble is in staying asleep. Inevitably, almost every night, I find myself waking up sometime between 1-4 a.m. to go to the bathroom. At least half the time, I have trouble returning to sleep. Since almost every other late-forties woman I know struggles with this same thing, I have assumed it is mostly hormonal, combined with getting older. And I'm sure that's somewhat true. But I'm once again reminded, after reading this article, that it just might be my own fault.

Screen time before bed... screen time in bed... may just be killing my sleep. Like so many other things, I know this... but I don't act consistently in line with what I know. Sigh. And so the list of things I hope to be better about in 2015 grows.

 

Today is all you'll ever have...

Is it possible for one small change in thinking or behavior to change your entire outlook or experience of life?  "Why yes, yes, it is!" I would answer, for I have seen it with my own eyes--or rather, heard it with my own ears--over the past month or so.

You see, I am a morning person.  I am not necessarily a "morning person" in the traditional sense of the word.  In fact, I used to be quite efficient and productive in the evening hours, those precious few hours when little ones are in bed and you can get stuff done without them under foot!  However, sometime over the past decade, I have turned into a morning person.  Those "little ones" grew up, so the evening hours are no longer the time that they are asleep in their beds.  Perhaps even more significantly, though, I hit middle age--that blessed time when, apparently, women begin to wake up at ridiculous times in the wee morning hours as a result of some mean hormonal trick that hits a few years before menopause does.  (Nobody tells you this, mind you.  You don't find out that this happens to everyone until you start to mention it to your other middle-aged friends.  Then they look at you like, "What? You didn't know that?!")

At any rate, when I awaken nightly--sometime between the hours of 2:00 and 4:00 AM--sometimes I am able to go back to sleep and sometimes I am not.  Most mornings, I stagger to the bathroom for the cruel-hormonal-nature-trick need-to-pee that has awakened me, then climb back into bed and drift back off to sleep.  But some mornings, my mind wakes up as my body does, and I can't control the racing thoughts that fill my mind and demand that my day begin RIGHT NOW.

As you can see, on these mornings, I can have been awake with any number of things (doing the day's devotional reading, praying for the day's requests and needs, practicing my Scripture memory verses, reading a book, grading papers, answering emails, catching up on Words with Friends games, trolling Facebook, looking over the calendar, etc. etc. etc.) for several hours by the time my husband rolls over and begins to drowse awake just before his alarm rings at 5:00 AM.  For years now, I have had the terrible habit, apparently, of hitting him with whatever urgent thought is occupying my mind, as soon as his alarm goes off for the day.  He is greeted, thanks to me, by urgency and panic-inducing tones regarding some serious thing I've been pondering and planning for hours.  Not fun!

Sometime this past month, some small little miracle began to take place--and not because I purposed it or planned it in any way!  In fact, I didn't really discover it was happening until it was happening, and I just happily realized it one morning.  Some odd morning about a month ago, I greeted my snoozy husband with a sing-songy, "This is the day that the Lord has made!"  And he answered with, "Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"  Sleepy smiles were exchanged, and his day began peacefully.

The next time I was already awake when his alarm went off, I again greeted him with, "This is the day that the Lord has made!" and he again responded with, "Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"  Somehow, we had started something, though neither of us realized it at the time.  A few mornings later, he was up before I was--I having gone back to sleep after the wee-hours wakeful time and slept through his 5:00 AM alarm-- and he greeted me with a big grin and a, "This is the day that the Lord has made!"  I returned the smile and answered, "Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

This delightful little exchange has become our habit each morning as we greet each other, without either of us ever deciding it or acknowledging it or talking about it, even.  The closest we came to that was one morning when I said something else--something urgent and startling, I'm sure--as the first words I greeted him with.  He rolled over with a fake cry and said, "You didn't say it!  You said something else first!"  And with that, I realized that I had broken an unspoken understanding that had developed between us... namely, before anything else, acknowledge together that today is a gift from the Lord, and that we should rejoice in gratitude first thing upon greeting it... and each other.

What a beautiful reality!  What a beautiful habit.
"This is the day that the Lord has made!  Let us rejoice, and be glad in it!"  (Psalm 118:24)

* Entry 1, January - The 12 Months of 2014 Blog Challenge - title is from Switchfoot's This Is Your Life

The Weary World Rejoices

Well, I must confess that it feels a little absurd to lift that line out of context and compare the rejoicing of the whole world regarding the incarnation of their Savior with the inane subject of Sunday afternoon R&R, but the "rules" of the Christmas Blog Challenge allow for such liftings without exposition of the original glorious meaning of the lyrics or acknowledgement of the banality of their new application.  So please bear with me.  I mean no disrespect!

I love Sunday afternoon R&R.  The original meaning of the phrase--rest and relaxation, I believe--has been expanded in this case to include any number of other r-activities: rest, relax, read, reflect, renew, refresh.  Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The practice of "quiet play time" was begun when my children were very young, as soon as they were old enough to give up taking two naps a day and went to only one.  The time of the morning nap was continued, but with "quiet play time" taking its place.  Mommy still got two times during the day away from the constancy of toddler-mothering--and at least one time away from everyone, once younger siblings came along and the children's naps were on different schedules.  This was good for everyone involved, and so was continued even once all napping ceased for a particular child, somewhere around the age of five.  "Quiet play time" was part of our kids' homeschool afternoons throughout many years of childhood, until the school load became intense enough that they could no longer spare the time.

This school year, however--when all of our school days are packed from morning gathering at 6:30 AM until bedtime whenever schoolwork is completed--it occurred to us that we will all always convince ourselves that we simply "cannot spare the time."  I remember my first introduction to the idea of the "tyranny of the urgent" in college, via Charles Hummel's book of the same name.  How frequently the urgent thing beats out the important thing in our schedules!  The thing-with-the-pressing-deadline or the thing-with-the-fixed-start-time will always win out if we let it, and that which is pressing in the short term will crowd out that which is pressing in the long term.  How subtly we begin to forgo that which will nourish our souls, without even realizing we're doing it.

So this year, after reading the wonderful book Sleep: It Does A Family Good, we began putting R&R time on the weekly schedule and fiercely guarding it.  Sunday afternoon opportunities are weighed carefully, and are only rarely allowed to break into the sacred Sunday-from-two-to-five time slot.

Sunday afternoon R&R does not always consist of a nap, though the findings of the sleep scholars that were put forth in the aforementioned sleep book bear repeating.  They have discovered--quite contrary to what we've always been told (which is that "you can neither 'make up' nor 'bank' sleep" and that "lost sleep is lost forever")--that extra daytime sleep, as long as it occurs within about ten days of the "lost" sleep that deprived us of our usual restorative amount, can make up for and correct the ill-effects of that lost sleep.  (It is interesting to me that the "within ten days" caveat discovered by the researchers--who were not Christians and made no reference or even connection to the Judeo-Christian Sabbath--pretty much assures that a regular practice of a weekly "day of rest" will always fall within ten days of whatever lost sleep threatens to lead to sleep deprivation!  How wise and loving our God is in His requirements of us, which are always ultimately for our good!)

That said, I always lie down during Sunday afternoon R&R and attempt to fall asleep.  If my body is tired and needs the extra rest, I can usually fall asleep quite easily.  Sometimes I sleep a short time and awaken refreshed and alert.  Sometimes I crash out into a "sleep like death," as we call it, and awaken after several hours, groggy and still terribly sleepy.  This serves me well, too, though, as it alerts me to the fact that I'm likely skimping too much on my nightly sleep during the week and that  I need to be more careful about re-establishing and guarding a good bedtime and wake time.

My children have varying opinions on naps--whether they like them, and whether they find that they affect that night's sleep for them.  But regardless of our differing opinions regarding the actual Sunday afternoon nap, we've all come to appreciate the forced, scheduled time to do that-which-we-don't-usually-make-time-for-during-the-week (but which we find refreshing, relaxing, and restorative).  The only "rule" is that it must be an "alone" activity--like "quiet play time" was those many years ago. Reading a book for pleasure... putting in some good time writing (a particular favorite for my author son)... catching up on correspondence... knitting... whatever... If you find it relaxing and restful and restorative, there's a time for it carved out each week, for your benefit and blessing.

Today, my R&R time involved a quick nap--I fell asleep with my hand resting on the warm palm of my dear, snoring husband--followed by this time blogging.  This is an activity I deeply enjoy--capturing a swirl of thoughts and feelings and trying to coalesce them into some meaningful communication that makes sense--and rarely take time for amid the hustle and bustle of our daily days and their busy-ness. How thankful I am that R&R time provides a guarantee for weekly refreshment, and that the annual Twelve-Days-of-Christmas Blog Challenge forces my hand to the blogging thing.  If nothing else, I'll try to capture some meaningful "memory moments" for my children to read one day, if they're ever so inclined. In the meantime, it's good for me.  Indeed, the "weary world rejoices" when forced from its franticity into deliberate pursuit of rest. 

Exercise Is Just Plain Good

And I don't necessarily mean that it is good for you, although that is unarguably the case.  We all know that.  It doesn't necessarily make us do it. 

 I'm talking something much more base, much more immediate, much more self-serving...and something I want to remember forever, when I'm tempted to forget.  When I'm tempted to stop exercising--as I always am--I want to remember this:  

Exercise makes me feel better.  

So this post is to my future self, the one who will decide that:
+ she's too tired (Remember, you feel much less sleepy when you exercise!)
+ her back hurts (Remember, it hurts less when you exercise regularly!)
+ she doesn't have time (Remember, you have lots more energy when you exercise!)
+ it's too cold (Remember, you can use the treadmill or the elliptical!)
+ it's boring (Remember, there's always Netflix--the inferior motivation for us "less-spiritual-than-Ann-Voskamp-who-listens-to-Scripture-read-aloud-while-she-exercises" types!)

Remember, future self: Exercise makes you feel better!!!

He Knows When You're Awake

So, here's some good news for those of us who wake in the middle of the night, spend a couple of hours awake, then fall asleep again. It's just another thing we're doing the old-fashioned way!

This interesting article lets us know that, actually, "first sleep" and "second sleep" were very common throughout history, and it has only been in the past century or so that we have abandoned it in favor of a single, shorter sleep period.

Now if we could just adopt the hobbit practice of "first breakfast," "second breakfast," and "elevensies," we'd be in good shape! By this time of the day, I'd like to have eaten a little bit at least three different times!