At Least They're Committed

Six hours and five (forced) minutes. Poor. Two hours and twenty-seven minutes. So bad it’s not even rated. According to my Fitbit, I don’t sleep well. My brain and body agree.

But a curious thing happened a few days back: The Fitbit gave me an extra hour after-the-fact, as in when I looked at my steps I had somehow accrued another hour of sleep. It showed the time as 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Odd.

I tracked my movements back and realized, oh, that’s when I was blogging! Evidently, writing is cathartic to the point of my tracker recognizing it as sleep. Fascinating.

Dear God, why can’t I sleep? I pray a lot when I can’t clear my mind; it does give me peace. But even at that I can’t help but analyze and question why things are worded as they are. I love words. I sometimes wonder how, too often, we recite prayers without feeling and/or truly processing the words.

For instance, in the Our Father / Lord’s Prayer, I changed “Thy kingdom come” to “To thee comes thy kingdom” because it’s clearer and other reasons.

The line “give us this day our daily bread” is outdated for many Americans because we’ve gotten more than enough daily bread and are suffering from an obesity epidemic. Yes, yes, bread could be a metaphor. Still . . . maybe something that has to do with empathy? “On this day please show us kindness; as we show kindness to others.”

Instead of “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I pray “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil.” ‘But’ doesn’t really make sense there to me.

In the Hail Mary, in place of ‘fruit’ I say “Blessed is the child of your womb, Jesus.” Saying ‘fruit’ simply isn’t impactful enough, methinks. I used to picture Jesus in utero as a peach.

Rather than “Pray for us sinners,” I say “Pray for the children.” Let’s face it, the children are our only hope. And I often change “Now and at the hour of our death,” to “Now and forever.” The traditional way asks Mother Mary to pray for us for a moment and then — and only then — when you either recite another Hail Mary or you die.

St. Francis is my favorite saint! Thus, in these troubling times, and because I am going through what so many people are going through as far as anxiety, as I say the Prayer of St. Francis, I add a line under “where there is doubt, faith.” It’s a bit longer but I think it’s relevant, “Where there is dread, acceptance, comfort and confidence in Your plan.”

Yup. Things such as these roll through my mind at night even as I turn to prayer to find peace. I hope it isn’t sacrilege to personalize these traditional prayers. I mean, the Lord’s Prayer in different translations is quite diverse! And I do like the traditional phrasing overall.

As far as the Fitbit, I doubt I’ll get credit for ‘sleep’ having written this. One-third of the way in, D’s mom came downstairs to tell me the trash company we enlisted passed us by again. Another battle, another topic that, like the wording of prayers, will keep me awake at night.