I don't know how much of a confession this really is, but I am a fair-weather Christian. I profess a love for God and Christ, and I willingly give Him praise and glory when things work out in my life. But give me one frustratingly sleepless night and praising God is the last thing I want to do.
Insomnia is a horrible state. I would be willing to call it a mental disorder in my case since it is more often than not the continual racing of my brain that prevents sleep from coming. Have you ever been so bone-weary that you don't even have the energy to fall asleep? Been there. How miserable it is to drag through the last few hours of your day, wishing for nothing but a nap every time you yawn, and then not being able to fall asleep when you finally turn off the light.
This is an all too common occurrence in my world. I have been an insomniac my entire life. I have very early memories of being awake all night playing with my toys in the dark so as not to wake my brother, with whom I shared a room at the time. By the way, that ploy seldom worked. More often than not, the commotion woke him. As a young teenager, I would spend my sleepless nights lost in books. Despite dyslexia, I would devour a novel in a night or 2, since I had nothing better to do. As an adult, I have gone through phases of how I handle insomnia. As I age, the effects of a single sleepless night are much more devastating than they had been in my younger years, and multiple sleepless nights leave me pleading with people around me to keep an eye on me so that I don't do something stupid.
Extreme exhaustion can do strange things to people. Much the same way that a panic attack or depressive episode can create a warped lens through the individual sees their world, extreme exhaustion can cause an altered mental state in which the individual may not be able to use rational or logical thinking at the highest degree, or in my case, at all.
Which brings me to last night's insomniac attack.
Ordinarily, despite the fact that I run my tail off most days, I utilize pharmaceutical assistance in order to sleep. Some nights I forget. Last night, I forgot. But last night I also drank the better part of a bottle of wine, so one would have thought that the alcohol would have done the job. That would be a negatory. After tossing and turning for 2 hours, utilizing every mental trick in my proverbial bag, I decided to get out of bed and spend my wakefulness being productive ~ I did homework. Woo hoo. After 2 more hours, I decided to try to sleep again.
By this point, even if I had fallen asleep the instant my head hit the pillow, I would have gotten less than 2 hours. Alas, it was not meant to be. Lying there dodging invasive thoughts and praying for rest, my prayers eventually turned into gripes, then into full blown curses. The book of Lamentations has nothing on the thoroughly pissed off, ridiculously exhausted complaining that I was doling out. Four-letter words were the order of the wee hours of that morning, and I think I may have even invented a few new ones. I let God know that I "fucking hated Him for torturing me". Ironically, earlier that day I'd had a praise song stuck in my head, and the fact that it is a bit of an ear worm was part of the reason I had trouble falling asleep. As it continually tried to creep back into my thoughts, I became more and more angry, reminding God that I had no intention of praising Him at the moment, that I wanted Him and the rest of His trio out of my head. Like an entitled teenager throwing a hissy fit, I demanded that everyone get out of my room and leave me the hell alone! Any guesses on how well that went over?
At some point, I managed to drift off into a fitful, restless nap, waking much too soon in order to assume my duties as mother to a teenager who refuses to get himself out of bed in the morning. Per usual in the wake of an insomniac attack, I have managed to drag myself through the day. I even read my scripture and devotional, in spite the overflow of aggravation with God's lack of mercy on my drained soul the night before. What really sucks is I still won't sleep tonight without pharmaceutical intervention, regardless of exhausted I am. A racing mind is a terrible thing, and a frustrated, wearied Christian mind is definitely the devil's playground.
