Nov 15.98: Light For The Day - "Sunday Night Insomnia"

"I will lie down and sleep in peace,
For you alone, O LORD,
Make me dwell in safety."
-- Psalm 4:8 (NIV)

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"Sunday Night Insomnia"

Oh, Father,
How is it possible
To be so wearied and so wired
All at the same time? 
The luminous numbers glare at me
As if to say

"Aren't you sleeping yet?!
How do you expect to get up for school
In the morning??"

Yet that's what's keeping me awake --
Having to get "up" for school.

How much easier Monday morning would be
If I could just shuffle over to my desk
With a cup shuffle over to my desk
Write out my to-do list in peace,
Piddle about with some papers,
Ease myself into the week.

How much simpler teaching would be
If the kids didn't arrive
Until sometime around Tuesday afternoon.

But monday morning they are there --
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,
Spilling book club money out of their mittens,
Chattering away to me
In dialogue straight from
Theatre of the absurd:

"You know what?
Yesterday we went by my grandma's?
But one of the fish was dead!"

Oh, Father,
I need some sleep.
I'm a teacher.
I don't have the luxury
Of a sluggish Monday morning.
If anything,
I have to be brighter and bushier than they.

I am, after all, Head Squirrel.
At what point did I stop making sense?
Maybe this means I'm drifting off.

Father,
I have to get up for school tomorrow.
And I need your gifts
Of strength
And peace.
And sleep.

I need some sleep ...

-- E.C.Murphy (First-grade Teacher)
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"I lie down and sleep; 
I wake again, for the LORD sustains me."
-- Psalms 3:5 (RSV)