God gave us sleep to remind us we are not Him. -Charles Spurgeon
This is what my after-hours life looks like sometimes. My husband was working in another state all week and planned to fly home for the weekend, so he booked a flight on Friday evening. He would have been home around 10:00 p.m., which is rather later than usual, but that was delayed to around 12:30 a.m. and then again to around 3:00 a.m. So, I heard him come in and lie down and begin his rhythmic soft snore on time just five minutes later. I envy how that man can fall asleep deeply in just five minutes, something he trained himself to do before we met.I probably would have fallen back to sleep, but ever since I took the antibiotics after the oral surgery, which I finished nearly two weeks ago, I have had some tummy trouble even though I have been having yogurt twice a day at the very least to replenish my probiotics. So, here I am at my computer after making five trips to the bathroom between 3:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. and giving up on going back to bed to actually sleep. However, in fairness, I have had this habit, ever since my pregnancy with the Princess to wake at around 3:00 a.m. and go the bathroom and/or drink some water and then usually go back to sleep...unless I am disturbed by something. That something could be an exciting thought, a worry, my Lord speaking to me, back pain, or just being too warm or too cold. So, I may slip easily back to sleep for weeks or now and then I may be up from that time I woke up, or I may have a problem with sleeping after 3:00 a.m. for several days in a row, like when I was pregnant.
Also, I just do not sleep the same when my husband is away as when he is home. In my subconscious, I know that I am the only adult here to handle whatever comes up. I usually cannot fall asleep until later than I like and I often am up earlier than I should be. When he is home on the weekends, I fall into my better schedule of going to bed when I like to the most and getting up early. When he is gone a lot and especially if he is gone for a weekend as well, I tend to get run down. And on rare occasions when he is gone for weeks, I have a hard time adjusting to him being here again and his snoring. I have used an app that of a cat purring for an hour or two to help me not miss him so much and to help me keep sleeping well when he came back.
I will say that once I am asleep, I really hate being wakened for any reason. I am usually a deep sleeper, probably because I sleep less hours than what is considered normally needed for most people. I find I had to really concentrate on fighting off a foul mood the rare times my poor child would wake me in the middle of the night because she was sick. However, I blame most of that on an abused childhood, where being wakened in the night never came to any good for me.
This week the Princess came down with a cold that has made her sleeping times do all kinds of flip flops. I heard her coughing and sneezing until 1:30 a.m. one night and then I was able to fall asleep too, without waking until 5:00 a.m. and then again around 7:00. After the second night of sleeping only a few hours because she was up most of it, I found her snoozing so peacefully in the evening and knew that she would not sleep the third night much better, of course, neither would I nor did I.
I used to really hate sleeping in until after daylight and I still am not that fond of it. I like having quiet dark mornings to think things over with the clarity of a rested brain that make the problems, whatever problems that seemed so big when I was too tired the night before to work out, have a truer perspective. Early mornings are just naturally the time I like to spend listening to my Lord, because I usually fall asleep praying at night. As daylight approaches, I want to be in motion getting things done for the day.
My husband likes to stay up late and wake after the sun is up, when he can. I used to stay up with him to fall asleep on the couch watching whatever on TV, but I really do not do waking up just to go to bed well because I usually am awake for an hour listening to my snoring husband, who like clockwork was out in five.
Although the Princess rarely has the insomnia with which she previously struggled for a couple of years, we still have kept the "no screens after 9:00 p.m." policy even during homeschool breaks that allow her to make exceptions once or twice a week, usually on a weekend. Her bedtime is 10:00 p.m. although she views that as just a guideline most of the time and might stretch it to 10:30. As long as she is able to sleep and is rested in the morning, we all are happy. When she had insomnia, our schedules were constantly at the mercy of it and her brain just could not engage with homeschooling well. She has since quoted to me (several times) how many hours of sleep a teenager needs and why. So, now she sleeps long hours and gets started in the morning a bit later than I would like, but we have discussed and agreed on a schedule for homeschooling that I am hoping she will try to stick with. The girl is constantly swinging back and forth between extremes, which wears me out enough that one would think I would sleep solid at least five to six hours, but then there is still that 3:00 thing that I got stuck with during and after my pregnancy so long ago now.
My Lord, thank you for restful and uninterrupted sleep and all the more of it!
