A new medical breakthrough in restful sleep!!

...Ask for it.

(I am writing this in an effort to better document even the 'smallest' ways God is mindful of me.)

I am in the midst of my spring 'break' from school, and I immediately seized the free time to earn some extra funding for God's plan for my summer.. From 8pm on Friday night until 4am on Sunday morning I worked 23 of 32 hours. Sunday was filled with church events and meetings, and I was staring down the barrel of another night shift that night. If I didn't obtain some needed sleep Sunday afternoon I would be sitting at 6 hours of sleep over a 72 hour period. Maybe not the healtiest routine. Even the military recommends more sleep than that as a daily minimum. (They claim you can operate efficiently on 4 hours of sleep per night for prolonged periods of time. The Army says that, anyway. The Marine Corps says you can sleep when you're dead. I'm going to miss my beloved Corps.)

I had work at 8pm, and laid down around 5:30. Just before falling asleep, I quietly prayed that God would grant me a very restful time of sleep. I fell asleep very quickly, feeling like I could sleep for 12 hours. In Sunday school earlier that day we looked at James 1:2-12, which shows us what our response should be to trials of various kinds. Having my alarm set for 7:30pm, I sensed a small trial coming on when I inexplicably snapped awake at 6:39. After just a few minutes of laying wide awake in bed I realized my time would be better spent on more productive endeavors. (although I was thinking sleep to be a pretty noble endeavor at the time) Based on my study of James 1, I knew I shouldn't ask God what he was trying to prove, but trust that this small trial would mature me in a special way. (Praise the Lord for Sunday school, by the way)

Around 1am I realized that I was still wide awake. I had a pretty strong headache, but I didn't feel tired. I even closed my eyes during a half-hour break at 2am, but couldn't fall asleep. Now, to the untrained eye, you may say that I was just using my incredibly strong will-power and determination to overcome any fatigue. Wrong. I happen to know myself, and I am acutely aware that my 'will-power' is composed of the same toughness you would find in mashed potatoes and gravy.

As I was thinking about it, I was likening this to the story of Gideon, when God reduced the army of thousands to just 300, so that HE would receive the glory, and not Gideon or any army. God knows my pride's tendency to seek glory for myself. If I had awakened with the alarm and rushed to work, I would have thought nothing of it. I would have made it through the night and really felt good about myself. (key word being 'myself') The abridged sleep gave me pause, though, and opened the opportunity for God to show me a little something about HIS capabilities, even in the small matters of my life.

This is just one bite of the feast of provision that God is pouring out on me.

Post-script: I was still wide-awake after work, but after tending to some emails, I decided that sleep was again a noble endeavor. So I slept a few hours.