To Sleep, Perchance to Dream – Ay There’s the Rub…

Son number one announced the other day that he just read a report where scientists haven’t really figured out why human beings need to sleep. Hmmm… Yes, there’s the whole, we’ll go crazy without sleep, but then the question still arises, why?  Why can’t simple rest do the job? So I pondered the question deeply and I think I, little ol’ Ann Frailey, have the answer – scientists of the world close your ears to this bit of blasphemy…

It’s because God wants us to.  Yep, it’s that simple.  AND why does God, Almighty, Creator of the Universe and every star system in it, care whether we rest or slip into dream-land? (Or nightmare-land as the case may be)  Well, now this is pure speculation on my part, so don’t go citing me in any journals or anything…but I’m thinking that God wants us to accept the fact that we can’t do what we want – all the time.

For example, I have a to-do list that has reproductive powers. It gets longer each day in stead of shorter.  I have often fantasized (Yes my fantasies have to do with my to-do list – keep Freud out of this) that I could stay awake a whole night and just CATCH UP.  Now wouldn’t that be cool?  I could saunter into the kitchen bleary eyed, no doubt, but with the gleam of accomplishment in my red eyes knowing that I have scratched off everything on that blasted list, for once.

But that never happens.  And WHY?  because I get tired…too tired to even fantasize.  I know that The List will be with me in the morning and as I doze off into dreams of roof repairs, squirrels in the attic, or what ever is floating through my tumultuous sub conscious, I realize that getting it “all done” really isn’t the point of my existence. Besides, in those strange, weird, bizarre dreams that I have often present things quite differently – my house isn’t really my house, but it feels like my house, I revisit childhood haunts that look quite different than there are in my awake brain – but some how I knowwhere I am and I feel at home there.  I suspect (again – no quotes here) but I’m thinking that God’s world is a lot bigger than my world and appearances are elusive.  Home is more than the place we remember, it is a state of being that we remember.

So there is a possibility that God, in His own mysterious way, is trying to communicate with us.  He is teaching us limits to our present world and worries, while showing us a landscape of immeasurable distance and endurance.  I can’t read dreams – I just know when I awake in a panic with a bear about to get one of my kids – I’m dealing with, or attempting to hide from, serious anxiety.  I also know that my dreams reveal something about me to me.  Are we sometimes to busy to listen?  So God does what He must.  He insists we sleep, dream, and perhaps, see what we would never see other wise.

I’ll never get my earthy to-do list done and that’s OK.  I suspect God has bigger plans. Perhaps He even dreams too…