We are in New Hill, North Carolina for Christmas. My brother has a great place for the families and we are resting well. Resting well is the thing I want to put in here this morning for I was worried last night.
My oldest daughter, Lydia, is home for the holidays. She also has a cold and is coughing a lot. Well I was worried and let me tell you why. It has to do with the cough. Except for my son, Colin, my whole family is sleeping in one room. No worries there for the beds are great, the room warm and all that. As I prepared for bed last night Lydia was reclining on a couch and talking / coughing on the phone with her best friend from Texas (at least that is who I think she was talking with since they talk a lot!)
I had all of these ideas that she would cough and keep us all awake, etc., etc. I would be tired in the morning. The routine of getting up before the sun, grabbing coffee, praying, writing Sunday school lessons and this blog would all be thrashed. I generally keep these thoughts to myself and they were not roaring lions in my head. They were more squeaking mice, but squeaks have their own annoyances.
I sat in my bed reading the biography of Lecrae called Unashamed. Great book and it sure helps me see and understand more of his songs. The beats he puts to his life and lyrics put a helpful light on my work at Augusta State Medical Prison, but that is another story.
Eventually my eyes signaled sleepiness1 and I went to sleep.
In the middle of the night one of my girls had come over near my bed. I don’t know who it was for it was dark. They were saying something like, “Daddy, you are snoring too much for me to sleep.” Having been awoken from someplace I just stared. Staring in the dark is not a very useful venture, and so my sleepy thoughts wished I had not been snoring. Do I sleep on my back? I didn’t think so. Being in the dark didn’t keep me from knowing I was on my back. So, yep, I was probably snoring.
That daughter somehow got back in her bed. I don’t remember too much of her going there. She just sort of drifted out of my thoughts. I laid there for a bit having those thoughts I just mentioned. Then I turned onto my side, but before falling asleep I think I thought, “Lydia’s not coughing. I’ve been sleeping.” Nice.
Later in the morning I awoke, thought about staying in bed, but when I saw it was nearly 6 a.m. I realized how ridiculous it would be for me to stay in bed. I unplugged my phone and headed out of our sleeping room.
As I walked to the bathroom I realized I had not been awake all night. If there was coughing it did not cause a disaster among us. I thanked God for two things: my sleep and Lydia’s sleep.
I also thought it ironic that my snoring not Lydia’s coughing had been the biggest issue I knew of during the night. A greater irony would be if indeed it was Lydia who had been by my beside telling me that she could not sleep. I may learn the answer to this when Lydia gets up.2
What is the point of this?!
The point for me was how useless the angst had been. We need to take our circumstances and put them under the faucet in God’s sink. That living water will wash us to our best shape (maturity: is that the word?). This does not mean I should have presumed that no coughing would happen. It could have. What I should have presumed was that had there been sleep taking coughing other advantages would have accrued.
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