{"id":743,"date":"2018-04-16T05:14:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T05:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/?p=743"},"modified":"2018-04-17T05:18:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T05:18:00","slug":"pillow-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/16\/pillow-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Pillow talk…"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I have to say my prayers sitting up in bed because my knees don’t bend.” My Aunt told me as I lay in a sleeping bag on the floor beside her bed.<\/p>\n

Sleepovers with my Aunt were the highlight of my childhood and watching her faith filled me with a determination to always kneel to say my prayers. \u00a0\u00a0 I’d do it for her.\u00a0Because I could.<\/p>\n

Only I haven’t fully lived up to that commitment.\u00a0 More often than I’d like to admit, I fall into bed and groan, “Ugh, I forgot to say my prayers.” I try to roll back out again, to use the knees I’ve been blessed with, but many times I pray where I lie, hoping my words will still reach heaven.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure they do.<\/p>\n

But whether I remember to pray before or after I climb into bed I always say a second prayer the moment my face hits the pillow.\u00a0 “Thank you for sleep.” I whisper, overcome with gratitude.\u00a0 “And–as desperately as I desire to learn to sleep on my back–thank you for tummy sleep because oh does it feel glorious!”<\/p>\n

In church yesterday a woman shared that she likes to live her life in a manner that makes her feel she has “earned her pillow” each night.<\/p>\n

Though I know sleep is a gift from God, freely given whether I earn it or not, I really love the idea of working for it.<\/p>\n

Grandmother, on a winter’s day, milked the cows and fed them hay,
\nslopped the hogs, saddled the mule, then got the children off to school,
\ndid a washing, mopped the floors, washed the windows, and did some chores;
\ncooked a dish of home-dried fruit, pressed her husband’s Sunday suit.
\nSwept the parlor, made the bed, baked a dozen loaves of bread,
\nsplit some firewood, and then lugged in enough to fill the kitchen bin;
\ncleaned the lamps and put in oil, stewed some apples she thought would spoil;
\nchurned the butter, baked a cake, then exclaimed, “For heaven’s sake,
\nthe calves have got out of the pen!”–went out and chased them in again.
\nGathered the eggs and locked the stable, back to the house and set the table,
\ncooked a supper that was delicious, and afterward washed up all the dishes,
\nfed the cat and sprinkled the clothes, mended a basketful of hose;
\nthen opened the organ and began to play, “When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have always loved this poem.\u00a0 Reading it fills me with a surge of energy, power and a desire to prove that I’m as bad a Mamba Jamba as ‘grandmother’ was.<\/p>\n

And now that I’ve written about it… Well, now it’s go time.\u00a0 I’m ready to tackle this day!<\/p>\n

And tonight when I climb into bed–whether I remember to say my prayers before or after–I’ll know that I’ve earned my pillow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Which is good because my new fangled silk pillowcase has to be earned somehow.\u00a0 Apparently silk is good for the hair and for the face of a tummy sleeper like me.\u00a0 But we’ll just have to see about that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I have to say my prayers sitting up in bed because my knees don’t bend.” My Aunt told me as I lay in a sleeping bag on the floor beside her bed. Sleepovers with my Aunt were the highlight of my childhood and watching her faith filled me with a determination to always kneel to … Continue reading “Pillow talk…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}