Sometimes this happens.
Yes, that is the mattress and those are the couch cushions on top of every single toy we've ever owned on the floor.
Yesterday my mind was a torrential downpour of stuff: Things to do, worries, stresses, expectations,
new goals, plan changes, some gratitude, disappointments, befuddlements, and so
on—though I am not sure about the “and so on” part. I think that list caught everything. So add the “and” before befuddlements and
cross out the “and so ons.” No need to
be mellow-dramatic.
And as Paul and I kneeled to say our evening prayer, I could
feel the insomnia setting in. It’s a
curse I share with lots of worriers and over-thinkers out there. And it all just tumbled around in my brain,
but not with the grace of damp clothes in a dryer, or even the jittery
movements of ping-pong balls in a lottery game thingy, but with the frantic
desperation of a kid in a money machine trying desperately to grasp at bills
that have no sort of predictable movement.
So after we finished our couple prayer, I prayed my own
prayer on paper. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I wrote.
“There’s a lot of stuff in here right now that I need to talk to you
about.” And then I made eight categories
on my paper and every time a thought blew around in there I caught a glimpse of
it, wrote some short hand version of it under its appropriate category, hoping
that God would know the whole story behind the three word condensed version,
and moved on to the next frantically flying dollar bill.
Can we just say that by the time I was done, if my thoughts
really had been money, I’d be rich?
But the point is, I got it all out. In my very own version of praying that I made
up by my own self.
And then I slept like a rock.
Till the kids woke up.
