When it does for twenty minutes or a couple of hours, the dreams are vivid and crazy, robbing much of the comfort sleep gives.
When I'm awake, either freezing or sweating, I feel the soaked sheets, the loneliness of night, the aching of my body, my mind races as crazily as the dreams.
Throughout my life I got sick only when I was exhausted.
Giving myself away to others on demand, trying to save people slowly killing themselves, tackling the Demons of politics and corporate greed, purposely meeting and trying to convert some of the meanest sons-of-bitches in the world to support the good who die too young while the bad go on to live long lives ... left me different.
Those tendencies remain my nature.
One of the things coming to me during these nights is what a lousy job I did, and do, taking care of myself which is easy to see when I consider failed marriages, alcohol induced poor decision making, obsessing over great things while utterly neglecting other equally great things.
Everybody loses their way in life from time to time, creating similar results, so from that perspective we're all in it together.
The reality is, in the end, it's only up to ourselves to keep repeating or exacerbating our past, or fully embrace the Now. The way to make the best of the present is to give it your best ... meaning the best "you" there is to give it ... not a watered down version leaning on crutches and anchored in what used to be real but isn't any more.
This is what I'm thinking and dreaming in my sweat soaked bed.
"Indeed God speaks once, or twice, yet no one notices it. In a dream, a vision of the night, when sound sleep falls on men, while they slumber in their beds, then He opens their ears and seals their instruction ..." (Job 33:15).
I cannot imagine an encounter with God being anything remotely like a Church service. I think one would rattle my bones, soak me with sweat, leave me dazed and confused but with absolute certainly that I'm being addressed.
Other's can't do the hearing for me.
I have to do that alone.
Then it's up to me to make it real ... now.
