Blessing
of Sleep
“I've
always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner,
the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters
closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.”
David
Benioff (City of Thieves)
Do you sleep easily? I
had a couple of husbands along the way who simply laid down and were
instantly asleep. It seemed like some kind of dark magic to me. How
did they do that! For my whole life, sleep has evaded me. I fall into
cycles in which I wake up at the same minute for nights in a
row—lately it's been 3:26 a.m. I've never used an alarm clock,
obviously, because I'm always awake by the time it's set to ring. But
here's the deal—on the rare occasion when I do sleep past five, my
entire day is thrown off. I depend on these early morning hours to
write; once my day is in swing, I can't marshal my thoughts.
Yesterday, a case in point.
In his book, Death Masks,
Jim Butcher wrote, “Sleep is God. Go worship.” Amen to that. If
you are a person who sleeps well, you really should get up every
morning, and get on your knees; thank God for the gracious gift
you've been given. Peaceful and refreshing sleep is truly holy.
Sleep has been compared
to a little death, of course. One remembers Hamlet's conversation
with himself when he thought no one was listening, “To die to
sleep—to sleep perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, for in
this sleep of death, what dreams may come...” And truly, we are
unconscious and vulnerable when we sleep. We enter another land, with
rarefied landscapes where who-knows-what may pop up. But in this
alternate reality, there is access to material we don't have during
our waking life. Our dreams, if we tune into them, are instructive. I
miss them when I don't sleep.
Sleep is also when our
bodies repair themselves. Human growth hormone is most active during
sleep, mending all the little tears and bruises we inflict upon
ourselves in the course of living. When you don't sleep, you don't
mend, and then you hurt all the time. Sleep is truly a blessed passage.
I hope you enjoy its gifts. And, if you don't, it's well worth
talking to your doctor about. You do want your skull swept clean and
all your monsters locked up in a steamer trunk, don't you?
In the Spirit,
Jane
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