Bear Stays Up For Christmas - Day 12

Count your blessings.

Bing Crosby’s classic says;
When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

It is a holiday standard. A few years ago, when my Paul was in the second grade he often struggled to get to sleep at night. Sleep didn’t always come easy, especially during the holiday season when his mind raced with thoughts about our Christmas party, his friends, being off from school, and just how many days until cookie day anyway. When it was my Matthew who couldn’t sleep I could put on soft Christmas music and rub his forehead until he relaxed. But that never worked for my Paul, If I was laying there, or sitting beside him, he could never resist the urge to talk, to tell me everything he had thought about or experienced that day. Well, to be honest, it is more likely that what he wanted to talk about wasn’t what he experienced that day, more likely it was something from a year previous that he was just now getting around to telling me.

As much as I love those moments with my Paul, sometimes I don’t have an hour to sit and listen. Sometimes, as a parent, I just need him to be calm and fall asleep. So, one such sleepless night I offered up Bing Crosby’s chestnut and suggested he try counting his blessings. He seemed eager to try this, so I kissed his head and left him alone. I had just finished telling Kat how clever I was to come up with this, and then there was my Paul standing in the living room telling me he still couldn’t fall asleep.

I queried him about what happened with counting his blessings. He very patiently and sincerely explained that he had done that, there was the one time at Grandma and Grandpa’s in the summer, one time at our house when we had spaghetti, and another time at our house when Mama made chicken. Three blessings, that was all he had done. He was proud of himself for remembering them all but still not even a little sleepy. My baby had counted all the times he had blessed the meal, thinking that was what I had instructed him to do.

So I tucked him back in and explained the real task is to think of all the things in your life that you have been blessed with, like family, like friends, and to thank God for them. “Papa, that seems like a much harder thing to do. I think I am just going to go to sleep instead.”