Sleepless In May
I really don’t care much for sleep. Now, I know that has just marked my name squarely in the “looney” column, but it’s true. The fact is, if my body didn’t require it to function, I would probably never sleep. You go unconscious for six to eight hours and only God knows what could happen. There could be a monster storm roll through and I would never know. Shouldn’t I be in the basement? Then there’s that ancient water heater that snaps and pops for reasons unknown. What if the pilot light goes out and it fills the house with gas? Suppose that spider I saw earlier in the bathroom…the one that got away…returns with reinforcements and has designated my right foot as ground zero. “Operation Big Toe”. There is plenty to worry about, if you’re a mind to.
Sleep seems like an awful waste of time to me. I just can’t justify crawling into bed when there remains so much to be done at the end of the day. There are closets to organize and canned goods to purge, laundry to fold, songs to write, e-mails to return, work tapes to record, pictures to hang, twenty year old afghans to finally finish…it goes on and on. To me, sleep is like saying, “I’m throwing in the towel on this day. I give up.” If I stay awake, I may still be able to change something; but if I sleep, I’m giving in. I hate defeat.
There’s a strange kind of claustrophobia that overtakes me when the lights go out. It’s really not that I’m “afeared” as my grandmother used to say. It’s more like “the end”. It’s kind of like the old test pattern from the early days of television when the stations signed off after The Late Late Show. It was a way of saying, “That’s ALL folks, until tomorrow.” Then the national anthem and then nothingness. I always wanted to exclaim, “NO! Wait! You can’t sign off! I’m still awake!”
Although I’m not that fond of sleep, I do hate being the last one in the house who is still awake. How dare my husband drift off to sleep when he knows full well that if a thought crosses my mind like a remodeling project or a news item I saw or a song idea I had that I can’t bounce it off him if he’s asleep. How rude! I guess I have been guilty a time or two of the Old Three Stooges routine of “Hey, wake up and go to sleep.”
I live in a small town and they do tend to roll up the sidewalks at 10:00 p.m. But thank God for the 24-hour Walmart and the Taco Bell. It’s not that I plan to run out for fabric softener and a Cheesy Gordita Crunch at 2:00 a.m., but I COULD! And that’s a comfort to me.
My brother, I’m told, when he was a child used to walk around and around the table trying to stay awake. My son, on the other hand, has practiced recreational napping for years. When he was nine and into dinosaurs, he drew a very laid-back looking creature that he dubbed a “Relaxasaurus”. Relaxing was his thing.
Another family member (who shall remain nameless) has literally elevated sleeping to an Olympic event. I remember asking once as they lounged comfortably in that hollowed out sweet spot on the family room sofa, “How can you just sit there for hours?” The answer came back, “Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy.” Clearly, there’s something I just don’t get.
Staying up late does have its down sides, though. I’ve spent many nights finishing up a song or some project while the family merrily snoozed away. I admit, the house seems eerily quiet except for the “tiny” sounds that register big in my brain. I hear the “plink” every time a June bug, drawn to the kitchen light, smacks the patio door. I hear every little scrape of a tree branch against the window and every creak of the old house settling. The refrigerator makes creepy gurgling noises and the ice maker startles me when it dumps a load of ice. The oven timer on my pathetic 1964 stove incessantly emits an annoying high-pitched hum. The neighbor’s dog warns any time anything in the neighborhood moves and that makes me wonder what’s going on out there in the dark, but I dare not peek out the window to investigate. I know that drill. I’ve seen the movies.
As much as I decry sleep as the barrier to accomplishment, I know I must give in to it. In that case, I just want to close my eyes, go to sleep immediately and have a peaceful, dreamless sleep and then awaken to a beautiful day, another chance to get something done. But, unfortunately, lately that is just not the case.
Frequently, I lay there for an hour or two, often three, maybe until dawn, with no apparent sleep on the horizon. My mind says, “Hey, here’s something you haven’t thought of in years. You need to figure that out.” Or I’ll have some word pop into my head like “hypotenuse” that I feel like I need to get out of bed and look up because I never took geometry. Or maybe I’ll have a song I’m working on playing so loudly in my brain that I could swear I hear it audibly. Then, of course, there are the big problems that seem to stand in line for their chance to be worried about while I lay there tossing. Sometimes I just want to say, “Look, there was no solution for you yesterday, there wasn’t one today, and tomorrow’s not looking good either.” Ugh.
It is at those times it’s so good to know that while I’m wide awake, whether working or tossing on my bed waiting for sleep to arrive, there is someone who is also wide awake. There’s someone I can talk to any time…someone who doesn’t mind being consulted at 3:00 a.m. There’s someone whose opinion I can ask and pour out my fears and frustrations to. The Lord never sleeps. He never slumbers according to Psalms 121:3. In fact, He never even nods off. All that stuff I need to talk to Him about, all that junk that crowds my mind, all those problems that need His answer, I can just take it to Him in the night and say, “There it is, Lord.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV) says to “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
My dear sainted Mother, in her farm girl way, used to say, “I just pray about it, and then give it to God and go to sleep. Ain’t no use both of us stayin’ awake.”
Well, it’s after midnight, so the Lord and I are gonna have another talk and then I’m leaving this mess of a world to Him, and I’d suggest you do the same. We’ll be alright.
