My mom always had to do some major encouragement in the mornings to get me up when I was younger. Her main method became singing to me - increasingly loudly - the song "Rise and Shine and give God the glory". On repeat. Serious repeat.
I was not a fan.
But here's the thing... it worked. Every time. I'd get grumpy, she'd sing louder and even more cheerfully {which you know when you're super sleepy someone being mega cheerful is like taking nails to a chalkboard}, but when she'd sing "and give God the glory, glory!" a couple of times and would be clapping her hands, I'd finally wake up - in part to make her stop, and in part because I really did want to get up in my heart. I knew it was another day to give God glory and for me to be thankful to have another day of life.
It's just in those initial moments when you're still groggy that you think "seriously?! why not just a few more minutes?!?!" Until of course you realize a few more minutes just turned into an hour and you just wasted more time sleeping.
But I still do a terrible job of getting up in the mornings. I'm crabby for like an hour after a nap. On Saturdays when I have the ability to sleep in sometimes, I can't just roll right out of bed and get going unless I have company or something pressing me to get up outside of the norm. With an appointment, a child staying with us, or anything like that, I can force myself to get up no problem. I may still be groggy or dizzy or weak, but I can manage to push through it. On ordinary days, notsomuch. For Saturdays or when there's time, I need to wake up, think, pray, talk to hubster, sit in front of the fan since I wake up stiff and hot, look at stuff on my phone, look out the window, and stuff like that. I hate just jumping right out of bed and on to something.
I have no excuse, no good rationale for it. I don't even realize I'm doing it. I seriously just don't do the sleep thing well. It's even worse now with Fibro, but as you can see, I can't fully blame it on that. I know part of the problem is that I just love life too much and I go to bed much later than I should, so part of it is a lack of sleep and poor planning on my part {though this wasn't the issue when I was younger}.
Needless to say, my poor husband has to tell me to get up, push me out of bed, pull the covers off me, tell me what time it is, and often times eventually give up on the days when I snap back at him to leave me alone every time. Poor guy, seriously.
I seem to have no control over who I am when I'm sleepy. I don't mean to be this way, but I have no idea how to fix it. I generally stink at being very self disciplined anyway. For now, I have 3 alarms that go off at various points in the morning until the point when I have to get up. And even then, hubster can still be found trying to shake my leg or pull me out of bed.
I'm thinking I may just need to give in and buy one of those alarm clocks that forces you to get up and move in order to shut it off, like these:
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What do you think?? LOL those things crack me up. I'm not certain they'd really work in our tiny room, but they might be worth a shot!
Anyway, with all that said, the point is that I seem to be another person altogether when I'm sleeping. And it's similar to those who are spiritually sleeping. You're groggy and out of sorts. You aren't who you want to be.
Our pastor's son, Luke, gave a great sermon this weekend at church called Waking Up to My Sleepiness where he talks about all of these things {and gives a great example of our pastor when he's asleep & how he's not who he wants to be when he's sleeping - ah ha! so I'm not alone!!}.
I thought it was phenomenal - and it really got me thinking through some things. I really encourage you to take some time to watch it or listen to it. It's really powerful.
What about you - do you have trouble waking up from physical or spiritual sleepiness?
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