fog

My brain is in a fog.  My baby girl doesn’t like sleeping at night, and while this makes me physically tired, I notice its effects most in my mental capacity.  I’m prone to thinking long, analyzing, and grappling with things until I understand.  But I just can’t do that right now, and it really bothers me.  I see problems that need solutions, questions that need answers, plans that need to be formed, and I am incapable of accomplishing any of it.

Maybe it seems trite, but it brings me to tears on almost a daily basis.  I feel incapable of functioning on even a somewhat sufficient level.  I would worry that there’s something more than sleep deprivation to blame, but when I realize that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten even four straight hours of sleep in the past 6 months, and that the total number from the past three years is probably in the low double-digits, I think the chances are pretty good that I just need sleep. So, I find myself almost panicking at my inability to form cohesive thoughts, or come to mental resolutions about anything.  My memory fails me, my vocabulary suffers, and my already limited conversational ability has been diminished even further.

And I wonder if there’s something God is trying to teach me through this.  Even as I pray – desperately sometimes – for Him to give me a sound mind during these days, I feel like He’s urging me to let go and just trust that He is sovereign over my days and all of the issues of life that I worry are suffering because I can’t think.  Beyond that, too, is the sense that He is gently, but insistently, forcing me to give up trying to figure out things that I’m perhaps not meant to understand anyway.  I have a tendency to want things to make sense, to be convinced that I can figure anything out if I just think about it enough, to not be okay with not understanding – but maybe God wants me to acknowledge that there are things beyond my comprehension, and at times, perhaps things that I shouldn’t seek to understand anyway.

So, as much as these clouded thoughts frustrate me, I’m trying to be content knowing that most of my immediate responsibilities, thankfully, don’t require much mental acuity.  I can give baby snuggles, and answer [most] math questions, and read history books, and give baths.  And if, occasionally, I forget I have something under the broiler in the oven, or I realize after my shower that I failed to wash my hair, well…those things aren’t likely to actually have any lasting repercussions.  At some point, I’ll have to concede to the reality that God doesn’t need my help to keep my days and my life safe in His hands.

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