This #TBT takes us back to a recent post. It was all about Clara’s sleep habits a few months ago. Her sleep habits got progressively better until last week. Recently she’s been waking up five or six times a night, often staying awake and inconsolable for an hour at a time. I’m sure she might be going through some transitioning pains as Alycia is now working and Clara is spending the day with her aunt and cousins. Whatever the cause of her lack of sleep, if you’re the praying type, our family could use your prayers, especially Alycia who is trying to acclimate to her first week teaching all while being a mother and a wife. All of our rhythms have definitely been blown up this week and at this point we’re just going one day at a time, hoping to find some semblance of balance before too long.
Before I had kids there were a lot of things that irked me about people who had kids. Ironically, one of the things that irked me were parents who would begin a sentence by saying, “Before I had kids…”
Another of the things that irked me was how parents constantly discussed their sleep habits or lack thereof. Whenever I would ask how new parents were doing, they would always say something about sleep and the quality of the previous night’s slumber adventure. In my non-parent eyes, these parents made it sound like parenting was nothing more than keeping track of consecutive hours slept.
Now that I’m two and a half months into parenting, I completely understand why parents focus so much on sleep. As a parent I think about sleep so much because I miss it so much.
I love Clara more than anything, but I wish she would sleep a little more. Thankfully she’s cute, because I can’t get mad at her when she smiles at me at 4:00 in the morning. I even have it easy compared to Alycia who has to wake up multiple times a night to feed Clara; I just get caught in the collateral damage. I took a nap every day this past holiday weekend; not intentionally, but just because I was lying down and I had the opportunity.
My need for sleep and my inability to get as much as I would like has definitely reminded me about the patterns and rhythms of life. I really enjoyed sleep before Clara, but now I recognize how much I need it. Any moment of sleep is like a drink of cool water in the desert.
We don’t need a baby to throw us out of our rhythms, though. It’s just as easy to let our phones, devices and other technology to get us out of our rhythms. How many times did I go on less sleep because I stayed up too late playing Oblivion or watching Battlestar Galactica? Now I get mad at my younger self for not sleeping every moment I could without a small human being waking me up as she grunts for an hour while trying to poop.
Whether we’re distracted by a bae or a baby, homework or video games, or YouTube or Netflix, we can’t get too far out of rhythm. God created us with innate rhythms, both for our physical and spiritual health. We need to embrace those rhythms as best we can and discern how to maintain them when our circumstances change.
What has blown up some of your physical and spiritual rhythms?
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