It is good to rest through sleep because:

• If you don't, you will have increased anxiety and breathlessness causing sleep apnea meaning you won't even be able to sleep (a vicious cycle)
• Without it, your memory will be impaired and your cognitive performance weakened
• It is anti-aging.  When you sleep, your body is resting, repairing and regenerating itself from the stress of life.
• After 3 sleepless days, you will start to hallucinate and lab rats forced to stay awake continuously die.
• A lack of sleep nightly (even an hour less than you should be getting) makes you prone to disease, weight gain and body aches and pains.
• You can hear the sound of God's words while you are in a deep sleep! (Daniel 10.9)
• Consistent, peace-filled sleep repairs muscles and other tissue and replaces dead cells.  It also gives your brain a chance to organize and archive important memories.
• Most people think they can get by with very little sleep, but studies say you may be cutting your life short by taxing your immune system and may be living a joyless life because your attention span is so impaired.

I am a changing woman.  I plan to sleep a lot more the second half of my life.  I don't even feel the need to spin it like, "Yeah, tomorrow I'll be organizing and archiving  my important memories pretty much all morning."  No, I am able to just say, "I need a nap.  See ya."  Ahhh - this is good.  I hope I'll never fall into the trap of trying to prove something all the time again.

It has taken me months to "get" this and I am still learning.  But God has relentlessly pursued me in it.  Just 2 days after I "discovered" Psalm 127, He sent out one more clear reminder. 

It was a Sunday morning (8.13.06) and I was getting ready to go to church.  My first beautiful grandchild, 3 year old Gavin, was at our house and full of spirit and energy, as always.  He had gotten ahold of a gallon container of bubbles and we were "discussing" whether or not now, just before leaving for church, was a good time to open the bubbles.  We were not seeing eye, exactly, so he was disappointed when I said to put the bubble bottle back where he got it.  For some reason he thought his little arms could toss it and suddenly the ceramic-tiled floor was covered with bubbles and poor little Gav was right in the middle of it.  It was like a cartoon scene as his little feet began to try to run out of the puddle, but weren't going anywhere…but not funny as he crashed to the floor on his back.  He is fast, so before I could get to him, he was up and trying again and a second crash.  All the excitement got the dog going and soon we had a Brady-bunch like moment of chaos with our mutt trying to run through the bubbles and spending a lot of time running in place, but then dragging the thick, slippery substance all over the kitchen floor and the family room carpet.  It was bad.

By necessity, I needed to stay home and get this cleaned up before anyone actually cracked their head open.  I was feeling a little sorry for myself because it was such hard work and I was just making my decision to learn from Jesus Christ how to rest.  But I got to it.  Some cartoons or something had been on TV when everyone left, so the TV was still going, but I couldn't even hear it as I sopped up and washed out towels.  When the floor seemed as clean as it was going to get, I threw everything into the washer and as I came out of the laundry room with one last towel to dry the area, the volume of the TV suddenly seemed louder and I hear some guy saying, "I usually don't read whole chapters when I preach, but I think I will today" - and words now so very familiar to my ears began to fill the air:  "Psalm 127, "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it…For so God gives His beloved sleep…"  He read the whole thing, some preacher named Bayless Conley out of California.

OK.  I get it.  I am not home because of bubbles.  i am home so I won't forget.

I have renounced my workaholic, activity obbessed, Type-A, driven, Messiah-complex, POed (performance-oriented), controlling and manipulative, aggressive, competitive, prideful, striving, stressed out, burned out, self-destructive, disobediant, restless and sinful ways.  No matter how hard I worked, it wasn't working.  It was all vanity.  But I will have to watch carefully not to go back.  I was a good hard-working church girl who needed a Savior and got one.  Occasionally, when I start creeping back towards too much work and activity and not enough resting in the Lord and being wholly devoted to Him, I find myself getting back into trying to impress God and perform for His approval rather than love Him from a pure heart.  Those are miserable days, full of defensiveness and striving.  Rest is better.  Sleep is divine.  A nap is a glimpse of heaven.

All you who are weary and heavy laden, Jesus will give you rest…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: I am only dust, after all…