My Internal Alarm Clock is BROKEN

From the time I was born my mother has said that my"internal alarm clock" was broken at birth. For the most part my body prefers to be awake at night and asleep during the day, or at least some version of it. More often than not this has caused problems for me since the rest of the world does not suffer from the same condition. When I was working I had to force myself to go to bed at a "reasonable" hour so that I could several hours later force myself back out of the bed. If I was doing well I could manage to get on a schedule where it became normal and not so forced. My schedule would be doing well until a long weekend or vacation. At those times I would allow myself to stay up later and sleep in later. Most of the time this just meant a few days of readjustment or indulging in an afternoon nap. Occasionally during the summers I would wind up getting my sleep schedule so off track that I was physically unable to go to sleep before 3, 4, or sometimes even 5 in the morning. Not a good thing.

Right now I am not working out of the house full time. This is a blessing and what Aaron and I both believe is God's will for me for this time in my life. While it has allowed me the opportunity to really be there once again for my family and friends and even bless others on occasion it has also presented me once again with sleep issues. This time they have come on slowly. For the first couple of months I would go to bed every time Aaron would. I hated the idea of him going to bed and not being with him, plus it was no fun to stay up by myself. In the last couple of weeks I have had great trouble falling to sleep before 2 or sometimes later and have had to absolutely force myself out of the bed somewhere between 10 and 11.
My struggle is that on most days I am free to adjust my schedule. This is great for things that come up or for doing things as I would like. It is not so wonderful when I dont have anything to regulate my sleep. I wish that I could say I was disciplined enough to get up (early-ish) on my own and go about my day but sadly I am not. Now on most days I do get to at least the minimum and the most important things on my to do list--even with my most productive hours falling in the late afternoon and evenings.
My conviction lately has been with the Lord calling me to be more intentional with my time. My hope is that I can start to readjust my sleep schedule once again so that I can make better use of my time. Feel free to ask in the future and see how I am doing. I don't want to change who I am, and I know that I will never be a morning person. My goal is simply to make better use of my time, to be more intentional and accountable.

A New Year...a new word

As we enter this new year there are so many thoughts running through my mind. Reflections from the past year, excitement for the new one. 2009 was a big year for us. Could 2010 top it, is it going to be our year of settling down, what new things will we do, what changes will we see? As I sit and look at a new year I wonder what will it bring. Over the past few weeks I have pondered whether or not to make "resolutions" or goals. There are so many things that I want to accomplish, try, improve, etc. In the past I have not made resolutions because I have trouble narrowing down just one area to focus on. On the rare occasion in the past when I have made a resolution I have like so many others not seen it to completion, sometimes even forgetting that I made one~haha.
This year I wanted to do something. I want 2010 to be different. While looking at a few different sites and seeing many of my friends set their own resolutions I came across an idea that seemed to fit perfectly for myself, it was exactly what I wanted for this new year. The suggestion was to pick a word to focus on for the year. Something that you could focus your thoughts and use as direction. This new suggestion seemed managable and not as overwhelming. Having something to apply to many areas of life, to improve and not just simply change.
As the weeks have progressed I feel like the Lord has brought one word to mind:

Intentional

During these past few weeks I have felt the Lord calling me to be more intentional with my life. Since I am staying home/working from home right now my sense of schedule and occasionally my sense of purpose have become very fluid and at times undefined. While I am learning to grown through this season in my life I am also feeling this new prompting from the Lord. I feel like this time has been given to me and that I need to be intentional about it and what I do with it. I need to be intentional about the kind of wife I am and the activities I find myself doing.

I look forward to seeing how this will play out in our lives this year.