Usually I sleep pretty well, which is a blessing for a woman over 50. And thanks to seasonal allergies and Benadryl, I’ve slept especially well lately. 20 years ago, we had children who physically woke us up almost every night. I swear they had a secret schedule planned out to take turns having a nightmare or a stomach ache just so that we never got a complete night’s sleep. Our children don’t live with us anymore, but thoughts of them will sometimes wake me up in the night. They are usually vague, swirling worries in the back of my mind about whatever they happen to be struggling with at the time.
Last night was one of those nights. I was really tired when I went to bed and fell right to sleep, but when 2:30 rolled around I found myself stuck in a mental feedback loop unable to get back to sleep. My children are all at a sort of crossroads in their lives right now, with my oldest graduating from college and looking for a job, my next one thinking ahead to her graduation in December and my youngest just plain struggling to make it through his classes (and since he seems fairly unconcerned about his future, I figure someone should worry about it, right?). When these worries wake me up, I find it best to just get up and do one of two things to clear my mind. Sometimes I do what I call a “brain dump” where I write down everything I’m worrying about and that sort of transfers the words from my brain to the computer and allows me to fall back to sleep peacefully. The other way to clear my mind is to get up and read from the Bible or the Book of Mormon, because reading the scriptures always seems to help put my worries in perspective and remind me that there is a loving God that is watching over both me and my family. Last night I did both of these and then went back to bed and got the 2 extra hours of sleep that I needed.
It's funny to me that when I wake up in the mornings and re-read my "brain dump" from the middle of the night, whatever it was that was keeping me awake a few hours earlier doesn't seem quite so urgent or worrisome or important. There's probably some neurological explanation about this related to our conscious and unconscious minds, but I see it more as a form of mental sleepwalking. My body is perfectly comfortable lying in bed, but my mind insists on pacing the floor and walking in circles. After I had gotten up and taken my mind and body both for a little "walk" in the night, I laid back down in bed and told myself these words: "I am enough. I have enough. I do enough. Now rest." And drifted back to sleep.
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