Lying awake..!
Robert Clements
Friday, May 14, 2010 - Ever so often I hear people saying how they lay awake through the better part of the previous night. They make it sound like the end of the world. “You lay awake all night?
“And did dragons and leopards and ghosts try to get at you?” “No!” they say and then laugh. I was once like that. I thought it was the most terrible thing to lie awake. I tossed and turned and woke my poor wife, and walked the house and most probably woke everyone else. My wife would get up and give me a sleeping pill, which acted only when dawn broke and it was time to rise.
Then one night I decided to enjoy these moments: I look out of the window and see the trees swaying gently. I hear the gentle tinkle of the wind chimes placed just outside and I think of a great big God above who like a father with a smile on face is lulling His children to sleep. He looks at my wide-awake eyes and gently pats my head. I talk to Him and He replies in tones slow and peaceful. I have all the time with Him, because the others are asleep and He is mine alone. Slowly like a little child He puts me to sleep. It hardly bothers me now if I fail to fall asleep; it means I can have my special little conversations with Him!. I know there are many of us who don’t fall asleep because we don’t know when day closes and night begins. We plough through the evening hours and instead of slowing down our activities pack in double time. Those who live in the countryside know that people instinctively fall into a quiet and peaceful mood at dusk. Voices are lower, and the quietness that settles over the earth influences the movements of people.
Thus, following the rhythm of the day, people calm down in the evening. Their tempo becomes slow and relaxed, their bodies and minds are at ease, and when they go to bed they find it easy to sleep. What nature instructs us to do is to calm down through the evening. One of the most suggestive sights is a candle burning. As the candle slowly becomes shorter, we know quilt and pillow beckon with outstretched arms. But today with Edison’s invention, the bulb lighting up the darkness, we feel that day stretches into another dawn.
We wine, dine and party, then jump into our beds and ask for instant sleep, then lie awake and toss and turn and greet the morn with rumpled bedclothes and even more rumpled beds and through the day those around us from bad temper and angry words know that Morpheus did not stop by our bed last night. But when you spend evening hours in unburdening your mind and put your cares in the hands of Him above, you will sleep as you put your head down.
—Email:bobsbanter@gmail.com
“And did dragons and leopards and ghosts try to get at you?” “No!” they say and then laugh. I was once like that. I thought it was the most terrible thing to lie awake. I tossed and turned and woke my poor wife, and walked the house and most probably woke everyone else. My wife would get up and give me a sleeping pill, which acted only when dawn broke and it was time to rise.
Then one night I decided to enjoy these moments: I look out of the window and see the trees swaying gently. I hear the gentle tinkle of the wind chimes placed just outside and I think of a great big God above who like a father with a smile on face is lulling His children to sleep. He looks at my wide-awake eyes and gently pats my head. I talk to Him and He replies in tones slow and peaceful. I have all the time with Him, because the others are asleep and He is mine alone. Slowly like a little child He puts me to sleep. It hardly bothers me now if I fail to fall asleep; it means I can have my special little conversations with Him!. I know there are many of us who don’t fall asleep because we don’t know when day closes and night begins. We plough through the evening hours and instead of slowing down our activities pack in double time. Those who live in the countryside know that people instinctively fall into a quiet and peaceful mood at dusk. Voices are lower, and the quietness that settles over the earth influences the movements of people.
Thus, following the rhythm of the day, people calm down in the evening. Their tempo becomes slow and relaxed, their bodies and minds are at ease, and when they go to bed they find it easy to sleep. What nature instructs us to do is to calm down through the evening. One of the most suggestive sights is a candle burning. As the candle slowly becomes shorter, we know quilt and pillow beckon with outstretched arms. But today with Edison’s invention, the bulb lighting up the darkness, we feel that day stretches into another dawn.
We wine, dine and party, then jump into our beds and ask for instant sleep, then lie awake and toss and turn and greet the morn with rumpled bedclothes and even more rumpled beds and through the day those around us from bad temper and angry words know that Morpheus did not stop by our bed last night. But when you spend evening hours in unburdening your mind and put your cares in the hands of Him above, you will sleep as you put your head down.
—Email:bobsbanter@gmail.com
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