Things You Learn While Trying to Sleep in Your Car at 5:30 in the Morning

I usually have no trouble sleeping. In fact, I typically have the opposite problem.

When its time for me to hit the hay, I'm unconscious with such rapidity I almost never remember actually falling asleep. I kind of just come to in the morning and ask Marnie, "what happened?"

My normal routine has me up at 5:15am. To put that in perspective, for the last four years I've been in night school three nights a week, forty five miles from home with classes that don't even end till nine or ten.

Over the years, I've averaged about five hours of sleep a night. Yes I know we are supposed to get eight or more but frankly, anything beyond six is wonderful to me.

I hear people talk of having problems sleeping - what is that? I'm sure its legitimate - but that's a problem like having too much money - a challenge I'd love to take on.

I'm up so early because I take my oldest son Joshua to seminary (a church-run religious class that meets before school). We carpool with another family and the arrangement is that I pick up the kids, and the other family takes them to school after the class ends. I usually work out after dropping the kids off.

This morning, the other family couldn't pick them up so instead of the gym, I had the opportunity of spending an hour, in the dark, in freezing weather, in quiet solitude in my mini-van.

The problem is, you can't sleep in my van. Oh sure you could fold down the seats, blow up an air mattress and camp out just fine. But sleeping on those seat cushions? Nope, not going to happen. Apparently the Dodge engineers, in an effort to cut down on driving fatigue designed their seats so as to avoid any possibility of comfort. Think of rocks and plywood.

So after reading the morning news on my phone and after giving up on stealing a few minutes of sleep, I just sat there. And did nothing.

The last years have been so full of school, work, family, church service, parenting. I'm always doing something. Most times I'm doing like fifty things. But this morning, I just stared out the window, watched the rain dribble down my windshield and savored the sunrise.

It hit me this morning that I should make more of an effort to take time to just be at one with my thoughts. I always have time to read and to pray. But taking time to just ponder, why is that so hard to do?

I got home still an hour before work and was excited to tell my wife about my experience this morning. I got about two lines into the story.

Then I feel asleep.