Now I pray myself to sleep

I am alone. It is quiet. I find my mind racing so fast that it trips over itself causing it to skip from topic to topic like a tattered old record on an over excited turn table. I should be sleeping. Several times in the last 6 hours of restless quiet I have come to that very clear thought... I should be sleeping.

Instead of sleeping I wonder about the state of the world, the state of my marriage, the state of my daughters head cold, the state of the basket of laundry I forgot to put in the washer, the state of my runny nose, the state of the clock that keeps clipping along without my eyes closing to peaceful slumbers and even in a moment of desperation the state of my hair even though no one would be seeing it.

Anxiety.

Alas, I thought for awhile you were gone but insomnia, restless mornings in a haze and this long evening remind me that you are in fact with me. You are ever-present and like satan himself you taunt me with mission impossible thoughts I can not erase at 3 am.

Tonight, I will not solve the worries of the world, I will not determine what is so wrong with my recipe for corn bread, I will not answer the age old question of why mother-in-laws plague your thoughts once you are married... but I will think about all these things and a thousand more.

Somewhere in the incomfortable silence I will find comfort and drift to sleep. I'll lull there between the babies heavy breathing on the monitor, my husbands rhythmic snores and the sounds of the ceiling whirling above and I'll stop thinking so hard about nothing. And in that moment the panic will awaken me. Just 3 seconds of panic. Like a bad dream kicking on in high volume and for a second I'll forget how peaceful I was...

And then I'll lay back down with my anxieties and pray myself to sleep.