It's a coincidence - or is it? - that Susan of Bipolarwellness just finished talking about sleeping problems, searching for solutions that might help Kira out. I had been planning on doing a post about the problems of getting rest. It was the topic for our last Living Room meeting.
Some of the practical solutions to getting to sleep are well covered in Susan's post. But there is a spiritual angle to this - one I haven't seen discussed too much anywhere. I read a wonderful book by Mark Buchanan and loved it so much that I am in the process of reading it again. The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring the Sabbath deals with rediscovering what it means to truly rest. One of the things Buchanan writes about is sleep.
I want to share with you what he has to say on this topic:
Sleep is "...a relinquishment. It is a self-abandonment: of control, of power, of consciousness, of identity. We direct nothing in our sleep. We master nothing. We lose ourselves and are carried like children or prisoners into a netherworld alternately grotesque and idyllic, carnivalesque and elysian. In sleep we become infants again: utterly vulnerable, completely defenseless, totally dependent. Out of control.
"...So sleep, besides being a necessity, is also an act of faith.
"...we give ourselves, regardless of our unfinished business, into God's care. We sleep simply because we believe God will look after us."
