Month: April 2022

I’m So Excited! A Prayer for those times you are too excited to sleep

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Does this ever happen to you? A long awaited good thing is about to occur. You want and need sleep. If sleep comes, it might be in short bursts. Each time you look at the clock you wonder why you are awake again. The internet is full of explanations for why and what to do about it. Search out those answers if you are interested.

Here’s my story. The alarm is set for 5:30 am to catch a flight to see my family who I last saw 8 months ago. To say I am excited is an understatement! I have done all the things to go to sleep and I keep waking up. So, while I try to go back to sleep for the twentieth time, here is the prayer I prayed.

God of All Good Things, You created us in your image and so wonderfully. In the middle of the night, I wonder why you didn’t give us an off switch. Just a simple way to slow our swirling thoughts and excitement down for a bit for sleep before a big, big day. I’m not telling the Creator of All how we should have been made. Just wondering how to get a little rest before my alarm goes off in two hours and fifteen minutes. Just wondering and wondering. Thank you for the ability to feel so much excitement that we can’t sleep. Thank you for long awaited reunions and other joyous celebrations that have us awake as we count down the minutes until we can get started on the big event. Thank you for creating us not as robots and instead as beings filled with emotions too big to be contained by sleep. As I close my eyes to try again to sleep, grant me rest, Holy One, and if good rest doesn’t come before my alarm then grant me the energy to enjoy the big day tomorrow. Big yawn. Amen.

Seeing these smiles makes it so worth it.

Book Review-Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

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This week I read two books. One took me the full two weeks of library loan to finish. I won’t be sharing anymore about that book here. And one book I read in two days. I read past my bedtime. It was a book I wanted to finish and also wanted to stop reading to make my time with the book last longer.

When I share that the book I could not put down is a book about a woman in her early twenties who has leukemia, you might wonder why this book captured my attention and interest with such intensity. It is because we do not talk honestly about illness in this country. We don’t talk about how confusing and challenging it is to be ill. We don’t talk about the emotional and physical demands on caregivers. We don’t talk about how illness changes relationships. This book tackles all these topics and so much more.

It has been over a year since I first heard about this book while watching CBS Sunday Morning with my mother-in-law. I meant to write down the title and read it. I didn’t. And reflecting on it, I don’t think the time was right then. In the midst of my raw grief for my mother, this book may have been too much then. The author was back on CBS Sunday Morning again recently. Immediately, I joined a wait list at my local library for this book. And the time was right for me to read it.

I encourage you to read this book. In these pages you will witness the ways cancer affects someone who has it as well as everyone around that person. You will read about life after cancer which isn’t as easy as it might seem. And I hope you will find insight as well as empathy for the many people who live with cancer.