Let me just share that Cheri is not a very good sleeper. Actually, she should probably go to one of those sleep labs to figure out why her sleep patterns are so lousy. Now, I know she goes to bed about 9pm each night, but she can find herself awake sometimes at 3am – certainly no later than 5 – and there are even times when she will sleep for about three hours, and then end up spending the rest of the night awake. When that happens, she will take her book and go read, or heat up some water, or even eat a mozzarella stick to try to get herself droopy again. I honestly cannot remember the last time when I asked her in the morning how she slept, and her response was, “Great!” or even “Pretty good…”
So lately she has taken to going out to the living room and trying to sleep on the couch. Now, our couch is fine and everything, but we didn’t buy it to sleep on, or hardly even lie down on, so it’s been pretty much the pits for quite a long time. Finally, after weeks of trying to dig out ideas for what she would want for Mother’s Day, and then going through the careful work of ordering everything, one morning as we sat having a cup of coffee together, Cheri said quietly, “I think I know what I want for Mother’s Day….” I almost told her that ship had already sailed, and that the load of presents were already on their way, but instead, in that wonderful supportive husbandlike way, I asked, “Oh really – what would that be?” Her answer: “I want a nice soft, cushy recliner that would fit me, that when I can’t get back to sleep, I can go sleep on in the middle of the night.” It actually was a great idea, and so I figured this would be a sweepstakes year for Mother’s day. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we would be shopping for the chair, and indeed we found what very well might be the exactly right one. And today is the day the chair is delivered. There was a bit of the scratching of the head when we were setting up the delivery. Apparently we could have the furniture place get the chair from their warehouse in Sioux Falls, about 3 or so hours away, but then it would cost an additional $99 to have them put the chair on a little truck and drive it 20 minutes to our house. It would be here in three days. Now, I didn’t even ask why $99, and not $25, since it was going to be in town, or even why it wouldn’t be another $200 – nope, $99. Well, we purchased a pretty nice chair, and I would have thought it would all be included in the price, but it’s their chair and their company, so I guess if they want to … The sales guy then offered another plan. We could opt for the “direct drop off” of the chair right from their warehouse. The only two catches were that they could only deliver it to our garage or our front door – not entering the house. Apparently, it costs $99 to step over a threshold. Also, instead of three days to drive straight up I-29 (and actually, our house is way closer than the store to both Sioux Falls and even I-29 itself), it was going to take ten days to two weeks to get it here. Yes, I almost asked the question of why, when it was coming to the store, it would only take three days, but when it was coming to our house, it was going to take four times as long… Well, setting all that nonsense aside, we went for the doorstep option, since we have some capable chair movers in the family who can carry the chair another 25 feet into the bedroom. So – today’s the day! After receiving our mysterious computer recorded message telling us to be ready on Tuesday between 11am and 2pm, we cleared out the space, and even dusted the corner to receive the new throne. And all I can say is, I sure do hope it works. First, I hope that just the idea of having a backup sleep option will be enough to coax her into a nice sleep, or in lieu of that, she will be able to kick the chair back to near full recline, and after the three cats relocate from the bed to her lap, which they will do, she can sleep the sleep of the righteous, and wake up ready to greet the day. We all have hopes in our lives, and the hopes are what truly do drive our decisions and our life directions. Of course, on the flip side, we are also pushed and herded by fear, which is the opposite, the counterpart to hope. We sometimes end up doing or not doing something because we dread what might happen if we went forward with a plan or an idea or a simple urging. It’s like that old saying, “If everyone else would jump off a cliff, would you go along with them?” Well, not if you have a good sense of fear and danger hanging on to your spine… But hope is a bit different. Hope invites us to aspire. Hope provides the seed of a dream, or even the urging of a plan that changes direction in our lives for the far better. Hope lets us peek over the edge of the horizon, and at least imagine something glorious to come. Hope even lets us believe that we indeed might get a good night’s sleep. So, sometime after the next few hours, it will all come to be. I’m looking forward to it as a nice wrap up to the Mother’s weekend, and even “to sleep, perchance to dream…” I hope you sleep well tonight as well… Word for the day: paroxysm. Pronounced pu-ROCKS-is-um. It’s another one of those words that grew as different languages piled on. The medieval Latin word was paroxusmus, which meant “severe illness, or a fit of agony.” It really came from the Greek paroxusmos, which meant “irritation,” and the words para “beside” and oxunein/oxus “sharp.” In medical terminology, paroxysms are sudden convulsions or fits caused by great pain or even fever. They don’t last long, but are pretty strong. In other normal language, a paroxysm is a sudden outburst of emotion, sort of like a volcano erupting. Little children have frequent paroxysms, because they haven’t learned to “control” their emotions. We call them tantrums, when they end up flat on the floor of the store aisle because Mommy or Daddy won’t buy the toy they want. When an adult exhibits a paroxysm, however, it seems scarier, and we wonder where all that rage and anger came from. It’s like they lost their mind, when actually, something “sharp” irritated them to the point of outburst.
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AuthorAfter 43 years of ministry, Randy Cross lived his "fourth life" and shared about retirement, living boldly and intentionally in our world. To be sure, there was some North Dakota thrown in. Archives
March 2023
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