awake at 3:00 in the morning

Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:1-2)

It is three-ten in the morning and I am awake. I am not sure why, as I was sleeping soundly. But whatever the reason, I am awake.

I use a sleep mask which makes me sleep like a dead man in one position all night. When I wake up in the mornings, my right shoulder and my right ear usually hurt because I slept on them all night without moving.

Tonight, I woke up about 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was relatively comfortable just lying there feeling the air blowing in my face, but I was awake.

And I was thinking.

Three o’clock thinking is the worst kind in the world. It embodies all that you hate in thinking. You are going round and round about stuff you would just as soon not think about. Failures, problems, difficulties, politics, the itch on your nose that is under the mask and that you will have to open one side to get to – all go round and round in your suddenly overactive mind.

My wife had to get up for a moment. When she came back to bed, I said, I am awake.
Well, maybe you need to get up and write, she replied. Yeah, I guess so, I said.

So here I am, at the computer and it is 3:20. And I have written. But I feel absolutely no sleepiness at all.

Before I got the mask, I did this a lot. I got up in the middle of the night and prowled around the house. We were in a one bedroom apartment so that didn’t take long. We are in a two bedroom house with a full basement, so if I wanted to, it could take longer. But I don’t really feel like walking around.

A lot of times when I wake up, I pray just lying in bed until I go back to sleep. For some reason, that didn’t strike me this morning. I was thinking about the president, and again, for some reason, I wondered what would happen if he were killed, how they would explain it to his children, how people would react. I don’t have any idea why that came to mind.

I remember how the commenters on the internet reacted when Mr Cheney had his heart problems not long ago, how many of them gibbered about how it was a good thing and that they hoped he would die. I was thinking that I hoped it would not be the case.

Okay, an odd thing, true, but it was three o’clock in the morning. You are never your most logical at that time.

I also began to dwell on a host of other stuff, stuff that I would just as soon not think about. That is the stuff that comes at this time in the morning if you can’t sleep. I hate that stuff.

Praise the Lord , O my soul; all my inmost being praise his holy name.
The cat just came in and is surprised to find someone up at this hour. He is making something of a nuisance of himself, something he does well – in general, he has been a disappointment as a cat – but he just wants affection.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
The VCR just clicked off. I had it set to record Forbidden Planet, one of my favorites on TCM. We got rid of our cable and the DVR Monday, but he told me that it may be a while until the cable itself is shut off. So I thought I would record a few things on the VCR. It is getting harder and harder to find VCR tapes. One day I will go to the store and there won’t be any. And that will be sad.

The benefits of God are one thing I try to think on. One of those benefits is the knowledge that at 3:40 in the morning, when my mind is active on things that I wish I had done and that I wish I hadn’t done, that when my heart condemns me, he is greater than my heart (1 John 3:19ff). Even though I lie awake awash in self-recrimination, he still loves me and is greater than my feelings. Those are the benefits I think about right now.

I praise him from my inmost being. If I didn’t, the praise would be kind of worthless, just a surface praise. Do you like me? Yeah, I guess you’re okay. The kind of praise that you might get from someone indifferent.

All that I have and all that I am, sorry and pathetic that it may be, is to his praise. How else could a person live his life.

It is 3:45. The cat gave up and left. My right hand keeps going to sleep and I have to stop to let it wake up. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Especially a curse if you play guitar. Oh, well, at least some part of me can sleep.

Praise the Lord.

Maybe I’ll go make some coffee or something. Just the thing to help you sleep. Caffeine.