Chasing Superwoman (12 page)

As much as I feed and nourish my body, you would think I'd take better care of my soul. Like the body, the soul needs water and food to survive. I've been living on a soul diet of bread and water way too long. In a twisted way, I have bought into the lie that God wants to deprive me with leftovers when He really wants to give me a feast. “No thanks, God, the beef tenderloin and fresh vegetables look wonderful, but I'd really prefer some old, stale bread and trans fats loaded with nitrates.” So I miss out on the main course and settle for the very things I don't give my children—leftovers and junk. But God still wants to give me the very best, and He waits patiently until I realize it's right on my plate for the taking.

It reminds me of my Sunday dinners. If I don't want fast food or frozen pizza I have to invest the time and energy in preparing a quality meal. Someone has to do the planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup for all of us to enjoy a family meal. And as much as I enjoy the food, I really enjoy the experience of spending time together with people I love. If I made the dinner for myself, ate alone, and everyone else just heated up the leftovers, it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable or rewarding.

Like my Sunday dinners, spiritual food takes time, discipline, and a willing heart. I need to plan in advance, try a few new recipes and patiently wait, being careful not to burn the main course or miss dessert. Sometimes, I wish God would just invent some spiritual fast food for working mothers. Don't we have enough on our plates? How about a pill for complete and total spiritual nutrition? But like my Sunday dinners, I don't think a pill could ever substitute for the experience or relationships involved in the meal.

I still don't have the perfect recipe for spiritual nutrition, and maybe I'll never completely figure it out. But I know that I don't need a pill, I need a Person. Why settle for bread when you can have the Bread of Life?

ELEVEN

When Will I Get Some Rest, God?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

I am always exhausted. I can't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep. Someone is always up.

My kids have never been good sleepers, starting with Nick. Like most new moms, I was desperate for a formula. So I read all the books that guaranteed he would sleep through the night if I just followed a set of simple instructions. It sounded easy. First, I tried putting him on a rigid feeding schedule. The theory? Demand feeding is evil. As important, no napping during scheduled feedings, and no snacking in between feedings. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, just let him cry it out, and by eight weeks, everyone will be sleeping through the night.

It didn't work. Try keeping a nursing baby awake when he is exhausted. And why would anyone in her right mind wake a baby for a feeding? Everyone knows the old saying, “Don't wake a sleeping baby.” So, I moved on to Plan B: the sleep schedule.

Plan B says it's okay to demand feed, but make sure you keep the sleep schedule consistent. Bedtime is always at the same time every night, and naps occur on the appointed hour like clockwork. This worked for a while, so long as the whole family revolved around the “schedule.” But some nights Nick would still wake up. I would feed him, and he wouldn't go back to sleep.

Night Wakings

Like most first-time mothers I know, I wasn't very good at letting Nick cry it out. Who wants to let your child cry it out all night when you've barely seen him all day? I tried buying earplugs, but I would still hear him. After about twenty minutes, I would usually give up and go get him. I wanted to hold him, and it was just easier to give in. I would be so exhausted the next morning from letting him “cry it out” that I could barely stay awake at my desk.

Even when Nick would sleep through the night, I would still wake up. It was automatic. I would wake up for feedings, even when he wasn't hungry or awake. Try telling your body clock to reset after months and months of waking in the middle of the night. Like everything else, it takes time. When he finally slept through the night for about a week and my body was finally getting used to the rest, he would get a severe cold and the whole cycle would start over. Again. Everyone knows sick babies don't sleep though the night.

Part of the problem with Nick? He just needs less sleep than the average person—something I didn't realize until years later. Nick and I like to joke about the fact that the two of us are always the last ones up. Like me, he can't turn off his brain, so he always has trouble falling asleep.

As I'm writing and the rest of the house is sleeping, he quietly sneaks in and sits next to me. I can't yell at him; he truly can't fall asleep. So I put my arm around him as he leans over my laptop to see what I'm writing. He keeps asking me when I'm going to write about him getting his tonsils out, and I explain that I am trying to work it in. Then he starts explaining to me how Velcro is made. The guy who invented it was walking his dog when some burr stuck to the dog. This gave him an idea to invent Velcro. The sticky side of Velcro is really small hooks. Nick learned all of this in “Mad Science” class
.

I am completely exhausted, but I try to listen. I know firsthand how rough it is when you can't sleep. I turn off my laptop, walk him back to bed, and lie down with him while we talk about who he played with at recess, who's the best tetherball player in the first grade, and what he watched on TV after school—after he did his homework, of course. I tried to get all of this information out of him at the dinner table without success. But something about the evening hour changes all that. He's relaxed and he wants to talk, so I listen. Part of me wants to stay and talk with him, but I know we both need some rest.

Anna needs her beauty rest. She lives life to the fullest, and by the end of the day, she is exhausted. She rarely fights going to bed, but through her toddler years she would wake in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons. She had to go potty. She was too hot. She was too cold. She needed water. She was scared. She couldn't find her blanket. The possibilities were endless. I took her in to her four-year pediatrician's appointment, completely delirious. The pediatrician told me I needed to find Anna some self-soothing techniques: “Tell her she can listen to music in the middle of the night, or better yet, make a tape of Mommy's voice that she can play, telling her not to be afraid.” Self-soothing didn't work. Everyone told me to let her cry it out. Easier said than done when you have two other kids who need uninterrupted sleep.

If you're reading this book I probably sound like a complete idiot. Why let a four-year-old push you around and deprive you of sleep? It's a good question for which I have no answer. But time heals all wounds, and shortly after that fourth birthday she outgrew her middle-of-the-night drama, and we all started sleeping again. Just in time for Abby's ear infections to start.

By the time Abby arrived, I was a master at tough love. I let her cry it out early, and she slept through the night almost immediately. I had finally figured it out. Or had I? Try letting a child with a painful ear infection “cry it out” when you haven't seen her all day. The drainage would cause so much pain from lying in her crib, and she would wake up as soon as the Motrin wore off, screaming bloody murder. I'd try to wait until she fell back asleep and prop a pillow underneath her head, but she'd always roll off the pillow. Sometimes it was just easier to hold her in the rocking chair as she slept.

For better or worse, Abby is the Energizer Bunny. The chick never stops. Shortly after she turned two and the ear infections wore off, she started to give up her nap. She would talk and play in her crib for several hours at naptime. Sometimes she would doze off, but then she would be up till midnight. Please don't tell me that 99.9 percent of all the two-year-olds in the world still need a nap. Abby is not one of them. By the end of the day we are completely and totally exhausted. Except Abby.

Some days, I am actually so tired that I can't sleep. It's like having a piece of chocolate cake dangling in front of you and then snatched away. You want to eat it, and you are so close that you can taste it, but it's gone. Most of my friends with young children can relate. Sassy Shelly ended up hiring a sitter in the middle of the night when she had the twins; Jock Jill has a colicky newborn who hasn't slept more than three hours straight since he was born; and Self-Employed Stefanie and I talk about meeting at a midpoint city and renting a hotel room together, just so we can sleep. We know we wouldn't sleep and instead we'd end up staying up all night talking, and we'd be just as tired when we got home. But it's a nice thought.

As much as I travel, you would think I would welcome a night alone in a hotel. Not so. I hate sleeping alone in hotels. Something about it creeps me out. I can't stop thinking about all the germs on the mattress, the strange person who's probably in the connecting room next to me, the filth on the carpet, or the weird security guys who all have access to my room. So I usually don't sleep a wink, and I return home even more exhausted than before I left.

What's even more irritating than not getting any sleep? Doug can sleep through anything. After years of harboring bitterness and resentment, I've just learned to accept it. From what my sisters and girlfriends tell me, this is a genetic disorder in most men. They've simply lost all hearing in the middle of the night. This disorder mysteriously appears in fathers with young children and is possibly irreversible. At least I can channel my anger other places, like the office.

Staying Awake and Faking It

Lady Lawyer can't afford to be exhausted. After about three nights without sleep, I start to become unglued at work. First I get cranky, and then I get downright mean. My body aches as I sit at my desk and I want to cry, but I can't because my day is packed with meetings and conference calls. I lose patience with Crazy Client, I put up more of a fight than usual with Jerk Lawyer, and I can't even bring myself to put on a happy face for the law students. Sometimes I put my head down on my desk, and I'm tempted to just lie on the floor or order one of those long sofas for my office. I could make the room if I just got rid of a few files. My managing partner stops by and says, “Are you okay? You look a little tired.”

I respond, “I'm fine, thanks.” Rule number one: Don't let people at the office know your home life has completely sucked the life out of you. It's one thing to be a little tired, but no one wants to hire a crazy, delirious lawyer who can't think clearly or walk in a straight line. Working mothers have to stay awake, or at least fake it.

My niece Level-Headed Laura recently asked me, “How am I going to get Harrison to sleep through the night before I go back to work?” My answer: Try anything and everything. Let him cry it out (if you can stand it), use a noise machine or electric fan, put him on a rigid feeding schedule, keep him up all day, and pump him with cereal before bed. So what if the pediatrician says to hold off on solid foods. Your own sanity is at stake, and you can't be a good mother, or a good teacher, if you can't stay awake. Don't forget to pray, and if all else fails, there's always caffeine.

This is where coffee comes in. I am completely and positively addicted to coffee. And I'm not going to even apologize or make excuses. It's my only real vice, besides red wine and chocolate.

The good news? I'm not alone. The rest of America is right there with me. I look around, and there are long lines in the coffee shop. There's nothing like my double-tall, nonfat latte to pull me out of my perpetual state of exhaustion. Before my first sip, I can already feel the buzz. If you haven't noticed, the employees at the coffee shop appear to be some of the happiest people around. The reason? They're not tired. They have an endless supply of caffeine. And as long as I have my caffeine, I can continue to fake it at work and act as if Lady Lawyer really has her act together, even when she is exhausted.

But just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I reached a new level of sleep deprivation. All five of us had the stomach flu at the same time, and I couldn't keep the usual amount of coffee down to keep myself functioning. Who got up with the kids all hours of the night, repeatedly washing clothes, sheets, and blankets while holding Abby and soothing Nick and Anna because they were all so miserable? You guessed it: me.

Even the flu won't deprive Doug of uninterrupted sleep.

Why do I let him get away with it? Why don't I just wake him and force him to help me in the middle of the night? Been there. Done that. First of all, the kids don't want him. He's not empathetic, and they end up yelling for me. I lie awake listening to him trying to put them back to sleep while they cry, “Where's Mom?” The other problem? He doesn't know how to clean up vomit. Usually he just throws a towel over it and I end up cleaning it the next day, after it's soaked into the carpet. And he always throws the soiled sheets in the washing machine without rinsing them out first. The last time he cleaned up vomit, it took a week for our washing machine to recover. The odor in Abby's room was so heavy that we had to move her out of her room until a professional cleaning company came to clean, disinfect, deodorize, and neutralize. I've since learned that this is another irreversible disorder of fathers with young children. Most of them are simply not wired to clean up vomit.

So when my entire family, including me, came down with the flu, Doug was no help. This is where my mother comes in. She dropped everything and came to town to take care of us. As soon as she arrived, I made Doug take me to the urgent care. Never mind that there is no cure for the flu. I couldn't stop shaking, and I was convinced I was dying. The doctor took one look at me and prescribed a heavy narcotic. He apparently thought I was a drug addict going through withdrawal. He was partially right. I hadn't had caffeine in over four days, and it showed.

I often ask God,
When am I going to get some sleep?
What does God have against sleep anyway? Just because He doesn't sleep, does that mean the rest of us need to go without it? According to the Psalms, He grants sleep to those He loves. Doesn't God love me enough to give me some sleep? It's been about seven years since I've had a good night's rest, and I'd really appreciate it if God would just sprinkle some magic dust my way, just for one night. Sassy Shelly tells me I should just take a sleeping pill, and like Doug I'll never even hear the kids in the middle of the night. But I can't bring myself to do it. It's bad enough being addicted to caffeine; the last thing I want is to get addicted to sleeping medication. What if there was a fire in the middle of the night or a stranger broke in? I might not wake up to rescue my children, and Doug will never hear them.

Maybe sleep is overrated. God doesn't seem to value sleep nearly as much as I do. In fact, bad things always seem to happen when people are sleeping. Samson is sleeping when Delilah cuts his hair. Gideon defeats the enemy camp while they are asleep. The ten virgins are sleeping when the bridegroom arrives. The disciples fall asleep in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus needs them to watch and pray. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that I'm lacking sleep.

Vacation

What could be more exhausting than working all day, being up all night, and repeating the cycle again and again? You guessed it: my family vacation. I like to refer to it as the pinnacle of my all-out tug-of-war with God over sleep. Jacob may have stayed up all night wrestling with God alone at Bethel. Not me. My all-night wrestling with God happened in an ocean-front condo in Florida, one of the most exhausting weeks of my life.