Monday, December 4, 2017

Staying Awake


In church on Sunday, the lessons we heard focused on staying awake.  I tend to be only able to walk away from a Sunday service these days with a word or an image, so forgive me if I'm shrinking down centuries of interpretation, but this is where I'm at.

Staying awake.

I'm notoriously sleepy.  I fall asleep the second a movie comes on that doesn't immediately capture my attention.  When I try to read, I fall asleep within the first paragraph.  If I'm asked to drive a car in the evening, I decline because I know I will most likely put the passengers in danger because of my near narcoleptic tendencies. 

The moments in my life where this sleepiness has caused the most issues has been those early and sleepless nights with my children.  My son was a terrible sleeper as an infant and only was able to fall asleep if a) he was nursing or b) he was being held in a cloth carrier while being walked and bounced and patted in front of our oven's exhaust fan.  I always chose option a.  But the problem with option a is that it was one that required me to fight my impulses to fall asleep.  As I sat there in the middle of the night, holding this child in the dark who had finally quieted, the most natural thing to do was sleep.  But almost every parenting book in the world will tell you this is a terrible idea - that falling asleep with a baby in your lap/lying next to you is dangerous.  So, I had to fight it.

I did everything one could do on a phone (and what on earth would people do before smartphones??), but still found myself bobbing and drifting, and most nights, I would be awoken by either my husband or the baby moving or breathing, alerting me to my mistake.

Stay awake.

After processing what I heard at church and my initial bristling at the idea - I started to wonder about the moments in my life where I haven't had trouble staying awake.  To be honest, there have only been a few.  Those nights where I've been so scared about what the morning brings that I couldn't do anything to bring about sleep.  Those nights where I've writhed in pain with the pending births of my children.  More often than not, staying awake has been due to my desire to sleep and inability to make it happen, not an active choice on my part.  Those nights I can immediately recall, can tap into their feelings in my memory, can taste the desperation and loneliness.  But I was awake.  And I was ready for what was to come.

Those evenings of insomnia have been more frequent this past year - with life changes and of course, a terrifying political climate, I find my mind racing at night - unable to quiet enough to sleep.  I have even felt moments where I dread the coming darkness because I see the hours laid out in front of me.

But maybe that's the point.

Advent is a time of darkness, a time where we really look at the emptiness around us.  Really see our needs and lacking laid out in front of us.  It's almost like a month of insomnia.  Something we'd rather close our eyes to, rather rush through - but these are the days that remind us that we are alone and in need of something, anything. R
esurrection.

This Advent season feels different to me.  I want to sleep, but can't.  I want to look away, but can't.  The darkness is all around.  I'm hopeful that rest comes soon.
 
Copyright 2009 Windy-Wisdom