Insomnia

I can't sleep. It's 4:16 a.m. here and I've been in bed for about an hour, just laying there looking at the wall and trying not to be so loud that I wake up the baby... I keep turning and twisting... Can't event blame my husband- yes, he's snoring, but very quietly. By the time I get back in there his snores will be louder, loud enough to keep me awake even longer, but that's not what has kept me up... I wish I knew what kept me up... not being able to relax, worried about money, fretting about visiting new churches... The frustrating thing is that my oldest will be awake in a little over five hours. She wakes up around 9:30 regardless of her bed-time, so I will be awakened by a sad three year old and have to function regardless of how much sleep I've accumulated. I hate not being able to sleep!

I've dealt with insomnia since I was a baby. My mom has horror stories of walking the floor with me as a wakeful infant, and when I think about it I can remember being awake in the middle of the night every place I've lived- Oregon, California, Kotzebue, Texas, Seattle... traveling with the drama team, camping with my family... I used to be TERRIFIED of the dark, and I can remember living in Oregon and imagining the most horrific things in the dark. We had wood paneling in our home and I had "discovered" several scarey things that lived in the wood knots in the walls- There was a headless woman who wanted to remove other people's heads, and a fanged, clawed rabbit monster, and other just scarey faces with big open mouths... We moved away from that house when I was nine. The first really long time insomnia bout I lived through took place when we moved to Kotzebue, Alaska. Kotzebue is way up high inside the arctic circle on the coast. You have to either fly in or come in on dog sled. I started 7th grade there, and almost never slept until 3 or 4 a.m... I don't know if it was the stress- I had a really hard time in the schools there, or my body going through puberty or just what. But since then I have had bouts of insomnia that seem to last for months. Yes, they are related to stress, but there's generally more involved. I slept something like two hours a night during the last three or four months of my pregnancies. I just couldn't get comfortable- huge heavy body, wiggly tiny baby. Part of my insomnia seems to be related to not being able to be still. When I'm really tired I just can't seem to relax-

The last time I attended Sunday School at our church, (the one we've left because of the new pastor), the pastor's wife said that if you can't sleep it's because there's sin in your life. That God won't let you go to sleep until you confess the sin and that he uses sleeplessness to convict you of your sin... first time I've ever heard this one. Pretty much sums up why we're leaving the church... I can't sleep and haven't really been able to since I was a newborn, must be some serious sin in my life...