I have not been sleeping well lately.
This is not a problem with actually going to sleep.
I am excellent at going to sleep.
Along with ‘having warm hands’, going to sleep is one of my superpowers.
I can go to sleep anywhere, any time; on a bus, on a train, sitting down, standing up. I have been known to fall asleep on the telephone (ask my partner Susie). I once fell asleep onstage in the middle of a play in front of 800 people.
No, the problem with my sleep is in the waking up.
Because I am also good at waking up. Too good.
I have to get up very early for work, because work is far away, so I have trained myself to turn off the very quiet alarm the second it buzzes, my hand shooting out from under the covers like a chameleon’s tongue catching a fly. I have become adept at creeping silently around the house like a ninja to avoid disturbing those in England still abed.
And the result is that my body now thinks that very early is the time to wake. So, I have been waking early on Saturdays and Sundays too.
Sometimes I get back to sleep. Sometimes, I am just stuck with it.
In the bible, there is a man called Agur and the first thing he says is this.
‘I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and faint.’
Very often, I feel like Agur. I am, I reckon, one of many.
Part of the problem, I’m pretty sure, is that after working from home for at least part of the time these many months, my body now believes that I live at work, and I need to re-learn the difference between the two.
While I was writing this, my eldest, Miriam, dropped me a line to say (and I quote), “Fancy a lunchtime pint on Saturday?”
And my heart sang.
So, this weekend, I shall learn by doing that.
I shall not work. I shall sit around a bit and ride my bike. I shall have a lunchtime pint and do things I like to do. And they will not all be laundry.
Go thou, then, as Jesus might say, and do likewise.
The picture at the top is Donatello’s devastating image of the weary Jesus stepping from the tomb on Easter morning, a detail from the Resurrection Pulpit at San Lorenzo in Florence.