Things I Discovered at 2AM (Instead of Sleeping)

I have a hyperactive mind. Sometimes it has trouble powering down when the lights go out. My wife drifts off and there I lay thinking of random stuff. Sometimes it’s good stuff. Or just silly things that make me smile. Last night I thought of all the things I wanted to be in life. Hockey player, golf ball diver, ice cream sampler. This led me to ask, what is the one thing I never ever wanted to be? I’ll tell you. It’s a swimmer. It’s not the fact that I’m no swimsuit model. Or that I’m so thin I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me three times. Here is my reason. When the poor swimmers finish, they can’t tell who won. You watch swimming during the Olympics and you feel for them. At the finish line they pop up out of the water…like gophers from a hole. Their glasses are fogged. Their chlorine eyeballs are bloodshot. Everyone else knows who won. But they look around, look up, look at each other, as if to say, “Me? You? Who? Who won?” I don’t need that confusion at the pinnacle of my career. Well, this made me smile. I don’t know if it’s funny to anyone but me. But there you are. It was late at night, okay?

Then at 12:23 I realized that if you were to walk around the world, your head would travel a slightly longer distance than your feet. Think about it. It’s the truth. At 1:47 there came another breakthrough when I realized that if you walk far enough north, you’ll be walking south. Keep going south far enough and you’ll be walking north again. I almost woke my wife to tell her, but more clever thoughts were waiting to be thunk. Like…did you realize that someone coined the term “to coin a term?” Or this: at this moment you are both the youngest you will ever be, and the oldest you have ever been. It’s true. Furthermore, in order for you to fall asleep, you should pretend to be asleep. Which I certainly was not doing at 1:54 am.

Some nights very different thoughts keep me awake. I attempt to solve tomorrow’s problems. Not just to-do-lists, but imaginary conversations with politicians wherein I brilliantly articulate my points until they admit I am right. “I will repent, revoke or resign,” they say.

Sometimes worry keeps me awake. What if the guy who invented the singing fish is out there working on something new? What if the economy collapses? The banks go belly up? What if the world gets even crazier? Is there any hope for my kids and grandkids?

Thankfully, I’m a better sleeper than I was ten years ago. In part because of a commitment to practice things preached on this program. Like Jesus’ life-transforming thoughts from Matthew 6:27–29, 34 (NIV), “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these…Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

One of the greatest steps to resting our minds today is to trust God for tomorrow. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds it. “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” we used to sing as kids. Maybe we should stop wasting time on that which robs our joy and sleep and sing that song again.

And as the sun wakes us in the morning, let’s breathe a prayer of thanks, then I shall likely have another random thought. Like this one: Did you realize that moonlight is actually just sunlight? It’s true.