Choices

I've been having trouble sleeping lately. Either I can't fall asleep, or something wakes me up and then I can't turn my mind off long enough to fall back to sleep for what feels like hours and hours.

A could of nights ago, as I was laying awake, the word CHOICE popped into my head. Choose, choice, imaging myself choosing something - I could just feel the essence of a choice right in front of me.

You have a choice, I heard. What are you going to choose?

Okayyyy.... I choose sleep. Sleep, I'm choosing you! Where are you, my dear friend sleep? 

Nothing. 

Well actually the opposite of nothing - lots and lots and lots of thoughts just continuing to flow. But sadly, no sleep.

Part of the problem: the overarching theme of that barrage of mental images and scenarios playing in my head and keeping me up at night is fear, worry, anxiety.

I've never been one to say I have anxiety, never been diagnosed with any sort of anxiety disorder, but the more I learn about it, the more I feel like anxiety has been a monster under my bed for most of my life. Most times, I do really well at ignoring it and going about life as usual, but sometimes I can hear it scruffling around under there and I'm paralyzed to do anything but wait it out.

But back to the other night. So clearly, I felt that *I* am to choose. I'm not 100% sure what that means, but that night, it meant tuning out the images of what ifs and problems and choosing to focus on something good. I chose the lyrics of a worship song, and now I don't even remember which one, but I just focused on one chorus, over and over and over, and before I knew it, it was 8 am and I had been sleeping peacefully for the rest of the night.

Something else I struggle with is waking up in a good mood. Or I should say, being woken up (by anyone or anything) often puts me in a bad mood. I don't know what it is exactly, and it doesn't seem to matter how much or how little sleep I've had, or whether it's a reasonable time to wake up or not. I just tend to not wake up in a good mood.

Back to that choosing thing... I can choose what kind of mood I wake up in. Or at least what kind of mood I continue in. Because if we're being honest here, sometimes when I wake up grumpy, I cling to that grouchiness long after events of the morning should have cheered me up.

I'm not saying I can choose for my problems to disappear. But I can choose the attitude I'll have when facing them. I can choos to focus on the problems (real or imagined) or the source of peace.

I choose peace.