I’ve been thinking about this challenge for the past few days, but was finally inspired by the baking and canning frenzy at my house today.
We are a missionary family. We run our ministry and our household on the generosity of others. Our financial supporters are amazing! Some of them have been with us since the beginning, sending their checks faithfully for the past 8 years. We’ve seen several go because of their own financial situations, completing the original commitment they made to support us for a certain time frame, and a few other reasons-some of which I’m too kind to mention here. We’ve also been blessed by new people wanting to partner with us. Overall, we’ve been very blessed, but to say the past 2 years have been a struggle is a gross understatement.
Benny and I are both terrible fundraisers. We don’t want to emotionally manipulate people to give. You’ll never see starving babies or abused puppies on our website, but we also need to figure out how to get the message out that we need help. What Benny does is a full-time job, but we’re living on part-time pay. I do my part by being a super couponer, shopping at a food bank, and a billion other little ways I am frugal for my family.
I know this is a DRAWING challenge, I just wanted to explain my drawing to you.
I chose green for what we have coming in now. I like green.
I chose gray for the one-time gifts that occasionally come in and allow us to catch up. Gray because it’s uncertain – we can’t plan for it.
I chose pink because it’s my favorite color, and I want pink. I want the rest of what we need.
I chose to draw a pie, because that’s what my house smells like right now.
Go check out my pie-loving friends who are taking this challenge with me:
Christopher would have been 3 months old a week ago today. Instead, Lexi and I drove to Children’s Hospital to pick up his autopsy report. Pulling into the parking lot felt like being punched in the stomach. Walking through the entrance, I couldn’t help but lift my eyes to the 4th floor balcony and remember the details, emotions, and horrors of July 22nd. I choked on my tears as we walked back to the medical records office, and I updated my Facebook status as I sat waiting while Lexi signed the paperwork. She sat down next to me, staring helplessly into my eyes. Mirrored pools of grief. We left, hoping never to return, and hugged and cried in the parking lot.
If you’re new here, you can read about Christopher’s amazing delivery here, and my memorial post about him here. But even those two posts only hint at the whole story. He is loved and he is missed. I have been able to get through a few days here and there without thinking about him, but the anguish I experienced today was fresh and rolled over me in waves. My heart still bleeds. Lexi and I likened it to ripping off scabs that haven’t healed and begun to separate from the wound yet. I told her that grief has no deadline and she should take her time dealing with life as it comes. Another lesson for me as I practice what I preach.
Tomorrow is a new day, one with hope and love and room to grieve and heal, but today was rough. Very rough…but I’m still standing.
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break.” ~ William Shakespeare
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief… and unspeakable love.” ~ Washington Irving
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” ~Winston Churchill
Here it is friends, the conclusion to the insomnia posts, for now. After my discussion with Benny about my sleep issues and thinking through our kid’s sleep patterns, I wanted to dig a little deeper. I’ve read several articles and received advice from many friends, and I have some new conclusions which may change again in the future, who knows?
As with most topics, there are a wide range of opinions. I was pretty sure I knew the cause of my insomnia, and there is plenty of data to back it up, but then I read a few articles on Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which is a fancy name for being an extreme night owl. It has to do with the circadian rhythm and where most people can make their bodies adjust to earlier bed and wake times, people with this disorder (I really hate that word) cannot, and attempts at therapies to correct it cause a variety of issues such as depression and physical illness. Often there is a feeling of having a lack of will power or others viewing you as lazy because it’s difficult for you to get up in the morning. BUT, those who have DSPS usually get good sleep once they go to sleep, it just happens later in the 24 hour cycle than the societal norm.
I was chatting about this with my friend Beckie today and I told her that my perfect sleeping hours – the ones that feel most natural to me – are 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. If left to sleep when my body wants to, and wake up feeling rested, this is when I sleep. But friends, it’s an early bird world we live in, and all the early birds want us night owls to conform. Whether or not I am ever diagnosed with DSPS, I have almost all of the symptoms, and guess what? It’s thought to be hereditary. I know both of my parents are morning people, so it must not come from them, but it does explain why my son Max has similar tendencies.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m ruling out a calcium or magnesium deficiency, or the amount of stress in my life, or even the fear aspect of going to sleep, but it was eye-opening for me to read that this isn’t as uncommon as I thought. This article mentioned a few therapies that have been tried to help those who might suffer from DSPS such as practicing good sleep hygiene, light therapy, Chronotherapy, and Melatonin, which incidentally can cause nightmares and actually disrupt sleep. Hmmm…interesting. I’ve taken Melatonin – a natural OTC supplement sold in the U.S. – a few times to help me relax and sleep. The article also listed several external links on the subject of sleep disorders. It’s interesting reading if this topic suits you.
There is a group out there called the B-Society. I haven’t fully researched them, but I loved this blurb on their website:
Why do we need to work at the same time and in identical patterns as the industrial times, when today’s innovation society does not demand this from us? Especially now, when we discover that a fourth of our entire population does not even fit to this old-fashioned day rhythm?
Why do we all have to be stuck on the road to work every morning and hurry back from there to pick up the kids before the day-care centre closes, when actually this could be different?
B-Society’s mission is to change the structures, on the labour market and in society at large, so B-people can finally fit in. We are going to reckon with the 8-4 society and its lacking respect for B-persons’ day rhythms.
YEAH! Oh…um…sorry. So now that I’m even more (and less) confused about my insomnia, let me wrap this up for us, okay?
I do feel that my natural circadian rhythm is okay and because of the lifestyle we have chosen (running our own ministry, freelance writing and homeschooling), I don’t see a reason to change that. Thank God Benny doesn’t either. He doesn’t get the whole being a night owl thing, but he loves and supports me and said he’ll get the kids going in the morning with breakfast, their chore charts, and school work until I get up. In turn, I’ll get everyone ready for bed and tucked in at night. I love it when a plan comes together. Speaking of plans, here’s mine, and it’s even better than the one I came up with the other day.
I’m going to keep a sleep diary for the next few weeks and figure out if I’m correct in the 2-9 a.m. thing and adjust accordingly.
I will make sure that I take my vitamins, drink plenty of water (blech), and get my exercise.
I will practice good sleep hygiene, and get a regular bedtime routine down, and then I will reevaluate. My hypothesis is that I will discover I do have a delayed sleep pattern but it’s not necessarily a disadvantage.
I will track my normal habits and see what patterns emerge, and I’ll revisit this topic with an update in about a month.
I know there are other factors to insomnia, but I want to see what happens when I approach this from a physical standpoint. We’ll see…
So, are you a night owl or an early bird? An A person or a B person? Are you happy with whichever you are?
Speaking of plans, here’s mine, and it’s even better than the one I came up with the other day.
