I should be asleep… but I’m not. Drew’s on his way to dreamland, but unfortunately, I’m not right behind him. Many nights I lie next to him, listening to his contented snores, as I try not to resent him for being fast asleep. I never understood insomnia until recently. With all the recent changes in my life lately, my body can’t seem to keep up. I spend a lot of nights tossing and turning, and most days exhausted. I figure that since I’m so exhausted, I’ll sleep great the next night. But it seems that the more exhausted I get, the harder it is to fall asleep. It’s a hard cycle to break. And it’s frustrating to be so tired and yet unable to fall asleep.
One of the ways I’ve found to deal with it is to journal a bit and try and get the stuff out of my head that refuses to sit still until morning. Usually I grab my trusty journal and a pen and write out on our love seat in the living room. Tonight I decided to do it via blog, and let the whole world know about my crazy sleeping habits.
So I must confess, I haven’t taken time to process a lot of the stuff from my week in Nicaragua. I didn’t curl up under a blanket with my journal and “throw up” on the page. Honestly, my transition back home has been easier than I would have liked. Normally, after mission trips, I’m so humbled that it’s hard for me to walk into Wal Mart because of all the materialism. After my first mission trip to Ecuador, it was months before I could go into a store and not feel guilty for the surplus that is available to me. This time, I slipped very easily back into my life, my routine, my problems, my complaints, my whining, my selfishness. It’s almost like I’ve become “hardened” to the poverty in other countries. I feel like I’ve seen it all and it doesn’t even really faze me anymore. I don’t like that. I don’t ever want to stop being humbled.
There have been some interesting transitions in this week though, especially on Drew’s part. I think he was a bit disappointed that he doesn’t get much opportunity to practice his Spanish anymore. Sometimes, Drew talks in his sleep. I think it was Monday night that I heard him talking in his sleep… in Spanish. I was half asleep myself, but was awake enough to realize what he was doing. I nudged him and laughed, “You’re talking in your sleep again… in Spanish!” He grunted, rolled over, and that was the end of it. He vaguely remembered it the next morning, and we got a good laugh out of it.
So I guess I’m still processing. I know it takes time, and that’s okay. It was a powerful week, and I’m still wondering what else God is going to bring out of it. I can’t help but think that Drew and I will be back. I’ll get a chance this week to collect my thoughts and share them at church. Hopefully that will start me thinking more and remind me of the things I saw last week.
I’m starting to feel a bit sleepy. I think I’ll go curl up under our new flannel sheets and “down” comforter and give this whole sleep thing another try.
