They say to sleep with your cell phone charging in another room. They say you should resist the urge to pick it up in the middle of the night. They also say you shouldn’t reach for your cell phone first thing in the morning. Who ARE these people and why are they so concerned about my reading habits anyway?
I try to only speak life into my world, so I refrain from saying things like “I’m a terrible sleeper” and “I can NEVER get to sleep”. (See how I did that?) Anyway, after I’ve done all my sleep hygiene skills and I still find myself awake at 2:00, I just start having a little convo with God.
“Hey, God…I know you’re awake. Wanna chat?”
He always does. And I get some really great insights. I mean like…Nobel Prize worthy stuff. I don’t write it down, of course…because my cell phone is in the other room, thanks to the sleep experts! ***insert eye roll***go get phone***sigh***
I have a reminder list on my phone that I’ve titled “Insights”. Things that God and I chat about in the middle of the night when I am busy not sleeping. Often, those insights are the basis for future posts. Sometimes they have to wait and marinate a while before they see the light of day. Other times they are pertinent to what I’m experiencing at the time and they show up pretty quickly.
My 2:00 musing this week…
“Life was so much easier when we didn’t know what we didn’t know.”
I remember when my kids were in their late teens and early twenties. They. Knew. Everything. About. Everything. It was SO enlightening and refreshing to hear from the “experts”. I was a lot younger then. I was only in my forties. My 40-year-old self argued every point. I harangued my kids like a demented cruise director. ***sorry***
It’s fun now to watch the grandkids with their own families. The only thing that has changed are the names and the faces. The fact that I’m sixty-six now and I don’t have the energy or inclination to harass anyone about anything has gone a long way in keeping my stress level down.
I have to defend these kids, though. They do not know how much they do not know yet. When they do, they’re going to have the same “light bulb” moment we all had when we figured out our parents weren’t the idiots we once thought they were. Life really WAS a lot easier in many ways when we were young. We hadn’t graduated from the School of Hard Knocks yet. They tried to show us, but we put the brochures in the drawer and did it our way.
That’s all these kids are doing…throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. That’s cool. I may not be around for their A-Ha moment, but I was around for my kids’ and you KNOW how sweet that feels. The day Daughter #1 called to ask me how to cook something I nearly swooned and spilled my latte.
Now I lay in bed and watch the slide show of insights God plays for my 2:00 mind and I smile. Because…two time zones away, there is a mama worrying about HER kids and a newlywed worrying about the bills. They’re big now. All grown up…making their own way…making their own mistakes and learning from them, one way or another.
The bottom line is this…
God gives our children wings.
He lets us teach them to fly.
❤️
“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NIV