God built rest into the very rhythm of creation. Keeping a day of rest made
His top-10 list. And believe it or not, rest serves a purpose -- a divine
purpose. It reminds us that God is in control. What happens when you cannot
finish everything that you think you need to get done and your body is
telling you, "you have to go to sleep"? You are thrown into a situation
in which you must depend on God.
Rest reminds us that there is Someone we can rest in. And our need for
rest is a daily reminder that we are finite creatures and must trust in an
infinite God.- Mark Earley, Breakpoint 1.16.08
I've always been, as Karl says, a "champion sleeper." If I let my body dictate things, I'd be sleeping for 9 or 10 hours a night... and if I go for too long on less than 7 hours a night, I start to get really grumpy. It's definitely not fun (for me or those around me!).
I read recently about a sleep study done where participants were told to get lots of exposure to natural light, use no artificial means of waking up (i.e. alarm clocks, etc.), and go to sleep and get up as their body demands. The average person ended up sleeping something like 10-11 hours a night for almost three weeks while their body recovered, then they fell into a natural rhythm of 7-8 hours a night. We're just so driven today, and since most of us spend all day in our houses or offices or stores or restaurants or driving from one to the other, we're just not used to matching that day/night rhythm.
In my head I know I should go to bed earlier - the getting up part is pretty inflexible, since I have a job to be at by a certain time - but by the time we're both home from work, dinner is made and eaten and the dishes cleaned up, the time seems so precious. We need that time to either spend together watching a movie or talking, or in "de-stress" mode (him at the computer, me with my book), and after an hour or two it's past ten and time to start the pre-bed rituals. It's hard to find ways to get the sleep we need without shortening that time together too much, or totally ignoring all the little things that pile up around the house to do.
Perhaps thinking about it in terms of trusting God rather than "just a little later" will help... it does put it into perspective.
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