Does Losing Sleep Also Make You Crazy?

I know the thing that makes me the worst version of myself.

Lack of sleep.  Simple.

It's so hard to believe the truth, to stay positive and peaceful, and to rise above our circumstances when we are just plain tired.  Am I right? 

A wise woman once said to me, "Heather, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do for yourself is take a nap."  Sometimes I wonder if depression in caregivers directly relates to lack of sleep. 

I need a nap.  One daughter successfully fought her virus, but the other vomited all over both beds and all the towels last night.  I told my friend in the parking lot this morning that I'm on my last load of vomit laundry.  I laughed.  Inside I was crying.

She said that would make a great blog title:  The Last Load of Vomit Laundry. 

Sleeping remains my singular goal today (besides comforting, hydrating, and nourishing sick children).  Living with flair means we recognize how sleep deprivation can keep us from living with flair. 

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Journal:  What happens to you when you lose sleep?

How Emily Dickinson (and a Friend's Blog) Saved My Morning

I'll just begin by telling you a certain child in my family vomits seven times last night.  This is the other child (not the one with the entirely different virus). 

I don't actually wake up this morning because I never actually went to bed. 

Everyone complains.  Everyone feels miserable, and to make matters worse, it's a holiday!  We'll miss the bike parade, the hot dogs, the fireworks--everything. 

Then I check my email, and a new friend sends me a link to her blog.  She's entitled it "Dwell in Possibility."  I think about the phrase all morning because it resonates deeply.  I've heard the phrase before--from some distant place--that recalls a beautiful hoping in me. 

Then I remember.  It's from Emily Dickinson.  I love Emily Dickinson. 

I dwell in Possibility --
A fairer House than Prose --
More numerous of Windows --
Superior -- for Doors --

Of Chambers as the Cedars --
Impregnable of Eye --
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky --

Of Visitors -- the fairest --
For Occupation -- This --
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise --

I read the poem again and again.  Today, I choose to gather Paradise.

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Journal:  What are the possibilities of this day?  Who could even name them all? 

What Do You Need?

Today marks the 4th day of staying in a small apartment in a new city all day long whilst caring for a child who has a 103.5 degree fever.   I'm not even going to bother making that sentence more concise.  It's been a long few days.  

It's lonely.  It's awful. 

My husband attempts to cheer me with coffee and jokes.  Then he announces, "You need people!  That's how God made you!"  He calls several friends and invites them to take me out for ice cream.  It sounds so desperate.  Aren't I stable enough to survive any circumstance?  Haven't I been able to find the flair in even the worst of situations?

I'm learning that I really do need people.  I love community.  And living with flair means knowing this so I don't go crazy and wonder if I'm sinking back into despair when I'm alone for too long.

________________
Journal:  What are some things you need?

Simple Moisture to Solve Winter Woes

I learn today the damaging results of winter.  This season, combined with the effects of drying heat in my home, makes us feel brittle and cracked.   There's barely any moisture:  we shock each other every time our bodies meet, our hair stands on end, and we suffer from congestion and raw skin. 

I wake up with sinus pain and achy joints.   As I tell my pharmacist all my winter woes this morning, I'm simultaneously piling up medications for congestion and sinus headache.  He leans over the counter and tells me my problems will more likely be solved by simple moisture.   "Save your money," he tells me.

That's a pharmacist with flair. 

Humidify whatever space I'm in.  Boil water on the stove.  Pour the boiling water over a tray of vapor rub.  Drink liquids all day long.  All day long.  In a season like this, we don't have the luxury of relaxing into our environment.  We assume a vigilance to make our indoor spaces suitable.

With these things in place--the liquids, the humidifier, the steam vapor--I then relax and breathe.  I drink deeply and breathe deeply to survive such a season as this.

The solution of simple moisture for what's physically brittle and cracked reminds me of my journey towards spiritual health.  I drink deeply of truth and breathe deeply of spirit--setting things in place in my environment to do so--so I might experience the kind of health that goes deeper than this cracked skin and congestion.

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Journal:  How am I adjusting my physical and spiritual environment towards health? 

Somebody Needs This

Last week--during my horrible cold-- my neighbors express their concern for me in. . . soup. 

First came the hearty meatball soup with spinach and tomatoes.

Then, on day two, a bright orange butternut squash soup paraded in with crostini appetizers so delicious I gobbled six between the front door and my kitchen.

Day three?  A classic turkey noodle elbowed in.  The Italian Mama brought more the next day, escorted by bread and chocolate and a baked ziti that stole the show.    

On day four, a minestrone humbly entered, warm and muted.  

And the next day, when I had given up all hope that my body would heal, a creamy potato soup arrived.

Bowls and bowls of steaming broth, eaten right in the bed, nourished me in more ways than one. My body was healing, aided by neighbors whose soup loudly proclaimed: "We are taking care of you!" 

This morning, word spreads that a family down the street is sick.  My crock pot muscles her way between the toaster and the coffee pot, and I chop all the ingredients for a vegetable beef stew.  I'll deliver it late afternoon and find my place in the parade of neighborhood love in the form of steaming soup. 

So loved did I feel by soup that I wonder why I don't make it every day this winter and find a neighbor who needs it.  Somebody needs soup today, and living with flair means I deliver it. 

When Your Cat Looks Like a Skunk

My Skunk Kitty

When you're sick in bed, you have a lot of time to think about your life.  You can have bizarre thoughts, brought on by fever and narcotics and the reality television shows you've been watching to pass the time. 

You start asking yourself if you're dying, and you wonder what the whole point of life is anyway.  Then you start thinking you'll never have another moment of flair again in your whole life.  You think that God has abandoned you and everything you thought was true is now untrue. 

You can't remember any of God's promises.  

And then your kitty comes up to snuggle with you, and she rolls over to show you the single white stripe on her belly.  She looks exactly like a skunk. 

But she's not a skunk.  She's a kitty.  She only looks like a skunk. 

What I see from this bed is not reality. 

There's another system, another actuality, that God knows and God sees.  Good, beautiful, right, and true.  As warm and comforting as this cat beside me. 

How to Be Sick with Flair

All night long, a fever rages, and I can't keep warm no matter what I do.  I'm coughing so much that I actually lose my voice.  I can't talk on the phone; I can't boss my family around; I can't even go to church and call out my welcomes. 

I try to get out of bed while everyone else is at church, but then I flop back down on the pillow.  I have no energy.  I'm suddenly amazed by how the body takes the energy it needs to get better and forces you to conserve it.  You stay in bed.  You don't move.

I can't stand the lack of productivity.  I actually devise a grand plan with my lost voice.  I can make a vow of silence and pray all day.  How godly!  But when I try to get my Bible and journal, I flop back down on the pillow once more.  Forget it.  I'm too weak.  

I'm worried about how in the world my husband got everybody ready for church and who handled all my responsibilities there.  And I'm worried about who's cooking dinner. 

My family returns from church, and the girls bound into my room like little gazelles leaping about the bed.  Their outfits are adorable, and my husband has actually fixed their hair.  The youngest has the smoothest pony-tail , and their faces are clean and bright.   I can't stop looking at that pony-tail.  For years my husband has announced, "I don't do hair.  I'll do everything else, but I can't do hair."

But he did it. I look again at that hair and realize how God provides, even down to the pony-tail.  And then a friend sends the message that she's bringing hot soup.   I turn over in my blanket and realize my God-given assignment.  Stay in bed.  Don't move.  

There's nothing I can do, so, for once, I learn how to let God provide.

Sound the Alarm!

Apparently, word spread that I wasn't in church yesterday.

"What did you tell people?" I asked my husband.  I was in bed, still in my pajamas, destined for the flu.   

"That you were tired, really stressed-out, and probably getting sick," he said.  Meanwhile, he collected the children to take them to an afternoon movie so I could sleep in a quiet house.

Then, my oldest approached me with her fist holding a crumpled up dollar bill.

"What's this?"  I asked her.

"It's my tooth fairy money from my piggy bank," she said, very seriously as she put it slowly beside me.  "I want you to have it in case you need to go to Starbucks later."  

I had husband love, daughter love, and then, and then, some completely unexpected neighbor love.

At 5:30, neighbors came over with dinner.  This amazing family brought me teriyaki pork tenderloin, fruit salad, green beans, rolls, potatoes, and ice cream for dessert.  I hadn't been in the hospital or anything.  I didn't even have a fever. They just heard I was tired and maybe getting sick.   

Then, this morning, another neighbor handed me a pack of those mocha frappuccino drinks to sustain me while working today.

"How did she know I love those?"  I asked my husband.

"It was either that or a bag of beef jerky.  You're sort of easy to please."  

It isn't like I'm on my death bed.  I was just really, really tired from a long semester.  I sounded the alarm on Sunday morning, and the family and neighbors mobilized immediately.  I know what happens when a mom takes a day off.  All of a sudden, the whole operation jams up.   There's a clog in the wheel; everything overflows.  She feels guilty and lazy because, after all, she's still breathing and can therefore empty the dishwasher. 

But I had to do it.   Living with flair means sounding the alarm if I have to. It means receiving from a community.  I want to be strong enough to stay in bed and strong enough to accept help.  And today, because I know what it feels like to be loved with a meal, coffee, and a quiet house, I know just what to do if I hear that somebody else is tired and stressed out.

My neighbors have flair.  Bringing unexpected dinner and iced mocha frappuccino drinks to a tired woman is a beautiful, and so appreciated, form of flair. Community flair--that's what helped me get out of bed today.