Presence, Security

Good Night, Sleep Tight

May 3, 2025

Sometimes I have a hard time staying asleep.

I fall asleep but then wake up, sometimes less than an hour later. And then I start worrying about being able to go back to sleep, which is not so helpful according to the sleep experts, who encourage you to meditate and think happy, sleepy thoughts, not anxious ones.

When I am having a hard time sleeping, it feels like my brain purposefully catches itself right as I’m nodding off and stops the process. Notices and stops. Notices and stops. It’s the strangest thing. It’s the thing that I do not want to do but that I do, on those nights when I wake up and can’t go back to sleep.

There was a night last week when I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted. It made the next day when I had a full day of work a little difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. I was able to function, and it wasn’t my easiest day ever, but it wasn’t the worst either. This is something I need to remember. Because I can tend to catastrophize about how awful sleeplessness is when I’m awake in bed for what feels like hours, thinking about how my life will absolutely fall apart if I don’t get to sleep soon.

In reality? It won’t fall apart. I will be tired, but I’ll also be fine.

So I am grateful for the sleep I eventually got that night, and grateful for all the nights this week and for the months (possibly years) when I haven’t had sleep issues at all. I’m grateful that these periods help me see how I can make sleep an idol, how they remind me that sleep is a gift, not to be taken lightly. And a night or two of poor sleep almost always results in a lovely night the following night. I can look forward to that, if I can stop the worry train from derailing me. Continue Reading…

Daily Grace, Presence

Good Enough

April 26, 2025

This bunny balloon blew into my yard and settled into my wildflower patch earlier this week. Biscuit growled at it. He was not a fan. I couldn’t blame him. It was a little strange.

Sometimes it is annoying when people sweetly tell you to “just do your best.” Because of course it is almost always possible to do something a little better. If I spend all day on it. If I have more time.

But most days, there isn’t more time. There is reality, and reality does not lend itself to doing one’s best at every moment. So I am trying to reframe the way I think about this. Instead of striving to always do my best, I am deciding to be happy with “good enough.”

Because good enough is, well, good enough.

I had two days in a row at home this week with nowhere I needed to go, which is one of my favorite things. Home is where I would probably stay most days if I didn’t have to work. Because there is much to do at home, and most of these tasks are things that I enjoy, especially the outdoor ones. I like working in the yard. I like taming the blackberries. I even like weedeating.

Except I can take the weedeater out and work until the battery runs down and turn around to survey my progress and realize that the weeds look like someone has given them a bad haircut. My work is not smooth like the weedeating the professionals do. It’s choppy and uneven. It wouldn’t pass for anyone’s version of “best.” I could feel bad about that and go inside and charge up the battery again and head out for another round. Or I could realize that it’s much better than when I started, leave it as it is, and call it good enough.

(Because it is.)

There were other things this week that had to be “good enough.” Continue Reading…