Joni Mitchell was right.  You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.

You don’t know what it’s like to take a full deep breath unless you’ve had pneumonia or cracked ribs.  You don’t know what it’s like to move your arms unless you’ve injured yourself in a car accident or had a stroke.  You don’t know what a blessing a car is until yours has broken down. You don’t realize how wonderful your wife was until she leaves you.  You don’t appreciate the woods until they’ve been cut down and it’s infinitely hotter without the shade and moisture.  You don’t know how wonderful fresh, clean water is until it’s been polluted.

One of the things I’ve been appreciating these last few months is the incredible blessing of sleep.  Although, generally speaking, I am a great sleeper, the last year or so has been difficult in this regard.  For a year, I was sleeping in an upstairs room and the bathroom was downstairs.  I had to walk down an unlit staircase and through three doors to get to the toilet.  If I got up two or three times to go to the bathroom, you can only imagine how disruptive that was to my sleep.  Complicating matters further, my room was quite chilly in the winter and extremely hot in the summer.   I didn’t understand, at first, exactly why I was so tired all the time.  Not until I slept in a great bed in the comfortable, cozy room of a friend, did I realize exactly how compromised my sleep had become.

Finally I moved to another home.  But it wasn’t any better.  I was helping out at my parents’.  They had gotten to the point where they needed someone to be there at night.  Dad’s Alzheimer’s was accelerating and he was beginning to wander at night.  Sometimes he would go to the basement and fiddle with the water pump (resulting in unexpected flooding one morning.)  Other times he would wander outside in his underwear.  Sometimes he would simply wander around the house turning on lights, talking and confused.  All of this was extremely upsetting to my mother, who was getting little sleep as a result of Dad’s nocturnal meandering.  So I moved in and took the burden off my mother.  As a result, of course, my sleep was often interrupted repeatedly.

Eventually we hired more caregivers and I moved to another state.  I moved because my spirit was calling me there strongly, but a side benefit was that I did finally have the opportunity to be free of the day-to-day worries and needs of my parents.  I also moved to a furnished place with a wonderful bed.  And my nights have been gloriously peaceful.

I am so very, very grateful for stress-free, uninterrupted sleep.  Sleep is a blessing that cannot be underrated.

May you have a wonderful day and tonight may you rest well and have beautiful dreams.

Abundant blessings to you!