Me, Books and Stress

My reading has always been a good barometer of what's going on in my life... If I'm experiencing a lot of stress, I tend to escape more. In fact some very stressful weeks can involve more than a book a day.

Which tends to increase the stress... 'cuz where is the reading time coming from??? sleeping time?? talk time with friends/husband/sister?? praying time?? time I could be writing about the stress and figuring out how to deal with it??

It's like some crazy vicious cycle- the more stressed I am, the more I read, which means that I get more stressed, which means I read more.... Yikes.

So. I'm dealing with some of the repercussions right now. Reading at night after working on the beading after putting the girls to bed... I haven't been going to sleep till at least 4, then the girls wake me up about 9-9:30... Then I'm tired all day... And in a bad mood... Way less creative, and way less able to deal with anything that happens during the day.

I am feeling very strongly that God is telling me to be more self-controlled in my reading. I've gone whole hog into this- not reading for a month, which ends up backlashing and causing me to do nothing but read for a while. That's not what I should be doing, either. Instead, I'm working on reading 2 chapters in a sitting. Instead of being like "look, there's only 60 or so pages left! I can finish that in less than an hour!", I'm going to try and go "Only 2 chapters. Yes, I'm 4 chapters from the end, but I'm going to read my 2 chapters and GO TO BED!!"

In the last 3 days I've succeeded twice in this goal and been in bed by 1-2 am, which is good. Not as good as I'd like, mind you, but definitely better than 5 am, which is what happened on the third night...

God, help! You know I have NO self-control in this area. Please help me be faithful in my desire to obey you. I cannot do this, but you can. Thank you in advance for the sleep I'm going to get! And the lowered stress level.