I’m Only Sleeping

I am not a morning person.

This has been well documented by anyone who has ever lived with me, travelled somewhere with me or tried to have a conversation with me at 6:30am. Mornings are just hard for me. They always have been, since I was little. It takes me forever to actually wake up. I am the girl who has to set two alarms forty minutes before I actually want to get out of bed. I think a great joke for God to play on me would be for me to fall in love with and marry a man who wakes up at 5:30 every morning with a smile on his face.

For the past week or so I have been having a hard time sleeping, not just getting up in the morning. Sometimes I will fall asleep right away only to wake up at 2am and not be able to go back to sleep. Some nights I can’t fall asleep at all and will literally lie awake tossing and turning until my alarm goes off in the morning. On Tuesday after a night like this I finally fell asleep somewhere around 5:30am and then managed to shut off both of my alarms and sleep past the time I should have arrived at work. Oops.

As a result of this not sleeping I have turned forgetful and slow, spending way too much time on the verge of tears. Yesterday I came home from work exhausted and looking forward to crashing on the couch for a few hours with the house to myself. After I stopped for some groceries, I arrived home, put my hand into my purse and reached around, no keys. You guys I nearly just sat down outside my building in the rain and gave up. By the grace of God, my roommate was on her dinner break at the hospital and answered her phone. I took the bus back downtown with all my groceries and got a major hug and keys from Roomie. I was so frustrated with myself and mourning the loss of two blissful hours of by-myself time. I was totally Crying On The Bus girl. The worst part is that I got to work this morning and realized that my keys had been in my bag the ENTIRE TIME. I was too tired and distracted to stop and look properly.

Why am I telling the whole internet this? I’m sure there is some rule of blogging that says you’re not supposed to admit to everyone that you are having a disaster week, right? I’m doing great! Perfect! Look how interesting my life is! I’ve got it all together!

The truth is I don’t. And the dark circles under my eyes have got me thinking a lot about rest. And unplugging. And how our culture seems to have no time for it. And I get sucked into it. I finish one thing and move immediately on to the next without stopping to pause and enjoy the fact that I accomplished something. When I do have time to sit and just be I feel so guilty. Like if I’m not working towards a goal or getting.things.done. I am wasting precious time. I’m glued to my phone, answering emails or texts as soon as they come in. Just going, going, going. All the time. Should I really be all that surprised that my mind and body have a hard time shutting down at night when I’ve been pushing them to be ON all day?

There has got to be balance.
There has got to be rest for the weary.

Do you ever look around at your life, our culture and our city and just think, “there has got to be a better way to live?” I know there is. I need to return to it Him.