SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT

I've heard mothers of new babies talk about checking to see if their baby is still breathing in the middle of the night if it's too quiet. You tiptoe over to the crib, lean over, and peer in the darkness to see if the tiny chest is still rising and falling. You strain your ears for the barely audible whisper of the breathing in and out. Then you release a sigh of relief and crawl back into bed, amazed at the miracle of this tiny life, sleeping there so soundly, unaware of all the emotions he is stirring in the adults in his world.

Last night, lying on the cot in my 100-yr-old grandmother's room at night, at first I was keenly aware of every sound she made in the bed just a few feet away. I was taking a turn to do night duty, making sure that Grandma didn't get up on her own during the night with her recently-operated-on hip and fall. My mom usually has the task of night watch. So I wasn't accustomed to all the groans and creaks of the mattress springs, the whiffling snoring, or the rustling of the sheets as she moved in bed. Every once in awhile I would stiffen, my senses on high alert at a new sound, trying to perceive whether I needed to get up and investigate. A couple of times she seemed to stop breathing for a couple of seconds, and I would hold my breath anxiously until I heard the steady rhythm start up again.

But an amazing thing happened last night. A miracle actually. Grandma never got up during the night. Not even once. Often Mom and Dad will be up with her 3, 4 or 5 times a night, helping her out of bed and onto the toilet and back again. Usually it seems it's just restlessness, discomfort, or agitation that makes her want to get up, rather than an actual need. But the doctor has prescribed a new medication that is working wonders. It seems to help her relax and feel more comfortable. And for the first time in the weeks since she fell and broke her hip, Grandma is actually sleeping through the night!

Yet somehow the lack of activity last night made me a bit more uneasy. It was too quiet. Something wasn't right. I lay there in the dark, listening for noises, wondering if everything was OK. Did I just not hear her? Is she trying to get up? I couldn't really see in the darkness of the room, and a couple of times I imagined that I could see her shadowy figure starting to sit up in bed. Once or twice I used the glow of my cell phone to sweep across the bed and ensure that all was indeed well.

And, miraculously, all was indeed well. She was still breathing. She was sleeping peacefully. And finally I was able to relax enough to sleep too.

A friend recently told me of the celebration she and her husband had when their baby slept through the night for the first time. It seemed strange, surreal to not be waking up every few hours to feed a crying baby. And the first few nights the parents couldn't really sleep. They kept listening for that cry to rouse them out of bed. But eventually they started getting used to the silence. What a wonderful thing. I think I could get used to it too.

FEELING IMPORTANT

If I had to be one of the characters in A.A. Milne's The House At Pooh Corner, I think I might have to be Rabbit. He's not necessarily my favorite character, but I must say I feel a connection with him.

Rabbit certainly does not struggle with low confidence. He is an animal that is full of the idea of his own importance, and convinced that the world needs him desperately. Like Rabbit, I rather enjoy giving orders and being the center of attention, especially if it's admiring attention by people who assure me that they can't possibly carry on without me! Today it struck me that maybe, just maybe one of the reasons I decided to become an elementary school teacher was so that I could have a roomful of little people who HAD to listen to me and do what I say!

Here's a taste of classic Rabbit from The House At Pooh Corner.

It was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him. It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh, and saying, "Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet," and then going to Piglet, and saying, "Pooh thinks - but perhaps I'd better see Owl first." It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said, "Yes, Rabbit" and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had told them.

"After all," said Rabbit to himself, "Christopher Robin depends on Me. He's fond of Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore, and so am I, but they haven't any Brain. Not to notice. And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count. And Kanga is too busy looking after Roo, and Roo is too young and Tigger is too bouncy to be any help, so there's really nobody but Me, when you come to look at it. I'll go and see if there's anything he wants doing, and then I'll do it for him. It's just the day for doing things."

I've had days when I felt like that. Have you?

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

Maybe I need to stop being so positive.

When we were growing up, my brothers used to tease me about my "just smile and be happy" outlook on life. "Why can't we all just hug and be friends?" they would chime, in an over-the-top sugary voice with a plastered grin. Then they would try to convince me that I was unrealistic and that life wasn't that simple.

In those days I was obsessed with big yellow smiley faces, the kind they have on Wal-mart's "Low prices everyday" signs over bins of pencils and cans of green beans and other things that I didn't know I needed until I see that they're ONLY $1.99 each! Those yellow smileys became my trademark in my early twenties. I had a smiley keychain, a foam smiley-face ball on the top of my car's antennae, and huge round sun shades with yellow smileys to keep my dashboard cool in the summer.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I chose any of those smiley items for myself. Friends started getting them for me, and then somehow it became known that Michelle liked yellow smiley faces. Maybe it's because I always put little smiley faces at the end of emails or letters. Or maybe it's just because I smile a lot! I remember once in an English Composition class at the community college, a concerned classmate asked me when I walked in, "What's wrong, Michelle?" Taken aback, I said I was fine. "But you're not smiling," he persisted. "And you're ALWAYS smiling. So something must be wrong!"

I think I'm naturally a "glass-half-full" optimist. But I wonder how much of my always having a cheerful expression is a learned behavior. As the oldest child, as the daughter and grand-daughter of missionaries, I've often felt pressure (real or imagined) to keep up a certain image, to look like I have it all together.

Over the last three years I've been involved in the long-term 24-hour care of my centenarian grandmother - through the ups and downs of strokes, emergency room visits, hospitalization, home health care, physical therapy, and middle-of-the-night assistance for bathroom use. "I could never do what you guys do," countless people have told me and my family, shaking their heads. "You have such a gift for this." Or they say, "Well, God must know you can take it, 'cause He won't give you more than you can handle!"

That's when I start thinking that maybe I'm a little bit too cheerful and optimistic. And I wonder if I'm unintentionally giving the impression that I have it all together when I don't. Maybe I shouldn't always smile and say "We're fine" when people ask how things are going with grandma.

Because often I feel like I'm not handling it all very well. I get stressed. I get irritable. I get grumpy. And the truth is, I don't think I have a particular gifting for caregiving. (I don't remember that being one of the spiritual gifts listed in my Bible). My DNA isn't unique among the human race, allowing me supernatural strength and grace and patience for the particular challenges of caregiving. Neither is the rest of my family specially trained and perfectly suited for this particular season of life. We just do it because that's where we are right now. And you would do the same if you were in our shoes. Just like you take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and face the particular challenges of your life every day.

But I guess that doesn't mean I should stop smiling. I'm trying to learn when and where it's appropriate to humble myself and admit when I'm not doing very well and need help. It's true that God does give us the grace we need for each moment. That's the difference between happiness, which is based on circumstances, and JOY, which comes from the security of trusting in God's sustaining power. So though I don't have to feel pressure to "put on a happy face" just to keep up appearances, I know that in THIS moment, and in the NEXT moment, and in the NEXT moment, He will give me the joy of the Lord if I ask for it, which is my strength. And THAT's reason to smile!

PLAYING "TEACHER"

"Emily, sit over here! Emily, come NOW! OK, I'm going to count to three. One, Two..."

With a stern look and an authoritative voice, Tessa was an imposing figure. And little Emily seemed to have no alternative but to scurry over and plop down in the spot under Tessa's jabbing finger.

But there was something wrong with this picture. Tessa is only five years old.

I had been called in that morning to be a substitute teacher for the kindergarten class, but it didn't take me long to realize that Tessa thought SHE was the teacher.

In the morning as I gave instructions for the reading activity, Tessa stood up and started directing her classmates, "OK, everybody - put your pencils down and be quiet!" In line for the bathroom after lunch, she jumped in the middle of an argument and started telling both sides to apologize. And marching up to me at recess on the playground in the afternoon, she announced, "You need to put Jeffrey and Thomas in time out. They were fighting."

But Emily was her particular target. Maybe it was because they sat across from each other at the same table in the classroom, or maybe it was just because Emily would follow Tessa's commands even when no one else did. After the other teacher and I had specifically told the students that they could color their snowman paper any color they wanted to, Tessa took it upon herself to guide Emily step-by-step through their "free coloring" activity.

"OK, Emily, first get your pink crayon. No, not the dark pink. The light pink. OK, now color the stripe on the mittens pink. Don't color outside the lines! Good. Now get your purple crayon..."

All day long, I reminded Tessa, "You're not the teacher. I'm the teacher. I can handle it. I've got it under control." But apparently, Tessa didn't trust my abilities and felt that the kindergarten classroom would be run better if she were in charge, or at least helping police her fellow students and keep them in line.

What is it about this whole thing that bothers me so much? I reflected as I drove home at the end of the day. The light at the stoplight turned green and I moved on with the flow of traffic. And I realized that in five-year-old fireball Tessa, I saw a bit of myself. Though I may not always verbalize it, I often feel that I could do a much better job leading than whoever is in charge.

"OK, everybody, this is what we're going to do." I see myself as a little girl with pigtails, standing up on a chair, barking out commands to anyone within earshot. "Listen to me, everyone. I know best!" If people would only listen to my wisdom. If everyone would only follow my advice. If I were in charge of everything, the world would be a better place.

I even try to take over God's job sometimes. I seem to think I can handle things better than He can.

But eventually, like Tessa, I have to be firmly but lovingly put back in my place. "You're not in charge," I imagine my heavenly Father telling me, trying to hide a smile. "I'm in charge. I can handle it. I've got it under control."

And, like Job, I put my hand over my mouth.

CONFESSIONS OF THE SLEEP-DEPRIVED

I've discovered that it really IS possible to survive on only three or four hours of sleep a night, but it does strange things to your brain.

I'm a person who requires a lot of sleep, at least 8-10 hours a night. 12 hours would be even better. Even when I was in college, I could never pull all-nighters. Though I confess I did have a bad habit of procrastinating, but no amount of pressure to cram for midterms and finals could keep my eyes open past 1 am. After my forehead hit the page of my Political Geography book one too many times, I would finally give in and crawl into bed for a few hours of shut-eye, setting my alarm for 4 am to continue cramming.

How do mothers of newborns do it? I've often wondered. How in the world can they keep going day after day on the minimal snatches of sleep they get in between middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes? I would never make it.

But our bodies have an incredible capacity to go beyond what we think we can handle. Over the last few weeks since my 100-year-old grandmother fell and broke her right femur at the hip socket, requiring hospitalization and surgery to put in two pins, my family has been in crisis-mode, running on little more than adrenalin and desperate prayers. "Abuela", as I call her (the Spanish word for grandmother), now requires 24/7 intensive care. It started in the hospital, where my parents and my brother and I took turns doing shifts with her to answer the doctor's questions and make sure she got what she needed. "Sleeping" is a relative term when the activity takes place in a reclining chair in a hospital room with all the beeps and whirrs and flashing lights of the machines, and nurses and aides coming in every couple of hours to take blood pressure and check her pulse. Trying to work a normal day after a night shift at the hospital was like stumbling around with sandbags tied to my legs, blindfolded and with earplugs, in a thick fog, though which I could barely see and hear fuzzy shapes of people-like-figures that seemed to be attempting to communicate with me in some East African tribal language. My eyelids seemed to be extremely sensitive to the pull of gravity, and my mouth had this embarrassing tendency to fall open as I stared blankly at the person talking to me.

I can understand why sleep deprivation is used as torture in some countries.

Now Abuela is home again. But this means that it's up to my parents, my brother and me, plus a couple of friends who help out a few times a week, to monitor her every minute of the day to ensure that she doesn't try to stand or walk on her injured right leg, which would most likely crumple and the bone would shatter if she tries to put weight on it. But Abuela's dementia causes her to forget that she's injured and try to get up on her own several times a day and during the night. So we're all on high-alert all the time. Usually my mom does the night shift on a cot in Abuela's room to help her get from the bed to the toilet and back again. But I try to help out when I can to give my mom a break. The nights I've done night duty I haven't slept more than three or four hours. I hear every shifting and turning in the bed and my ears are perked for that particular sound of her trying to get out of bed, at which point my whole body jumps into attentive focus to deal with the situation.

But even when she's still I have a hard time relaxing, and end up having stressful dreams about toddlers wandering dangerously close to the edge of a steep cliff with no railing, beyond which is a sheer drop-off of thousands of feet, and I am the sole person responsible for the children's safety. I wake up more exhausted than before I drifted off.

Yet somehow we keep going. Of course there are days when I can sleep in or take naps to catch up for lost sleep. And most nights I get plenty of sleep, so I can't really complain too much. But I'm clinging to that verse that says "He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2). I appreciate a full night of uninterrupted sleep more than ever. And the next time I see a mom of a newborn baby, I'm going to give her a hug.

EATING CRACKERS WITH A SPOON

“You can use your fingers to pick that up, Abuela.” I tried to intercept my 100-year-old grandmother's attempt to scoop up a Ritz cracker with tuna onto her spoon.

“It's OK to use your fingers to eat it. The spoon won't work very well.” Seeming not to hear me, my Abuela (grandmother in Spanish) continued to slide the cracker around the plate on the tip of her spoon, intent on her task. Finally I had to gently remove the spoon from her hand and place the cracker between her thumb and forefinger. “It's much easier this way! You can just eat it with your fingers.”

She looked at me a bit blankly, smiling weakly. But she quietly ate the cracker and tuna. Yet not more than twenty seconds later, she was once again chasing another cracker around the plate with her spoon.

Sighing, I tried to keep my voice cheerful. “You can just pick that up with your fingers, Abuela. It's much easier to eat it with your fingers.” This process was repeated at least six times – once for every cracker on her plate.

After about cracker number four, I was ready to confiscate the spoon AND the crackers. This was going to be a long meal.

Multiple strokes over the last few years and creeping dementia cause Abuela to revert to child-like behavior at times. When I'm getting frustrated with having to remind her something for the umpteenth time, I think about all she's lived through in the last century. Raising five children in Cuba, Spain and Morocco. Serving in missions with her husband on three continents. A faithful wife for over 60 years until my grandpa went to be with Jesus in 2004. A grandmother of seventeen, and a great-grandmother of eighteen.

How many nights has Abuela rocked her children and grandchildren to sleep on her lap? How many lives has she touched with her organ and accordion music in church services, or with her services as a capable secretary and accountant, or by her gentle smiles and encouraging words, or with her biscuits and roast beef and rhubarb pies cooked with love? My grandmother is a remarkable woman, and it's a privilege to care for her in the sunset years of her life. And if she wants to use her spoon to try to pick up her Ritz crackers, why shouldn't she? At 100 years old, she's earned the right to eat her crackers and tuna however she wants to!

Cheerleader

In 5th grade I wanted to be a cheerleader. Kimberly, who lived down the street, would come over to my house after school and teach me cheers in our backyard. We'd practice the jumps on our big trampoline. Clapping and stomping with the beat, I'd yell out the chants in my best cheerleader voice.

"BE a-GRESS-ive! BE - BE a-GRESS-ive! B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E!"

Cheerleaders seemed so cool - with their cute flouncy skirts and big pom-poms. But I was too self-conscious to tryout for the squad. I was sure I would fail. I couldn't do the splits, for one thing, and I knew that was a requirement. So I nursed my secret dream behind the closed door of my bedroom, where no one could see me or make fun of me. And I kept practicing the one or two cheers I learned from Kimberly - just in case one day I was good enough to make the cheerleading squad.

"BOOM! We're dynamite! BOOM! We're dynamite! We're tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick BOOM dynamite!"

Though I never got to wear the flouncy skirt and shake the pom-poms on a cheerleading squad, I've come to realize that I AM a cheerleader. I love to encourage people who are struggling, to cheer on those who are doing good work, and to give someone an emotional boost when needed. By cheering for you, I'm saying that I am part of the team too. I'm saying that we're in this together. I'm saying that I believe that God is doing a good work in you, and He won't stop until He's finished!

And not only am I cheering for you, but Jesus is cheering for you (Rom 8:34)! The angels in heaven are cheering for you (Luke 15:7)! Abraham, Moses, Esther, Ruth, and Paul are all cheering for you (Heb 12:1)! What an amazing cheering section that is!

Who can YOU cheer on today?

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses... let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us." Hebrews 12:1