Sleepwalker

Yesterday, one of our pastors at church preached (praught?) a sermon on “sleepwalking through life”. It was a very insightful, thought-provoking and poignant message about how easy it is to go through the motions of our day-to-day lives, wandering around as if in a trance-like state and missing the mark on discovering our unique God-given purposes and finding the answers to why we are here on this earth and what we were hand-crafted by Him to do while we are here. (I will include the link to his sermon at the bottom of this post if you would like to hear it. It’s really good.)

In keeping up with the sleepwalking theme, Pastor Matt shared some hilarious personal stories about having a child who sleepwalks and how creepy and weird it is. Being a sleepwalker as a kid myself, his stories brought back a lot of memories for me.

I seem to recall as a child often being the main character of many comedic stories shared around the dinner table at holiday gatherings. While passing the gravy and buttering their dinner rolls, my story-telling family would get a kick out of sharing about all of the silly things I did in my sleep.

While most of the stories were extremely embarrassing at the time, as the years have gone by the mortification has diminished. I am now able to laugh at these stories too. Would you like to hear a few of them?

Well, there was the one time when I walked out into the living room like a zombie. My mom and my uncle were watching TV as I marched over and sat down on the couch. With eyes wide-open, staring blankly into nothingness, I didn’t say a word, just sat there looking creepy. That’s a great way to freak out your extended family members. My uncle had never seen me sleep walk before and was probably waiting for my head to start spinning around or for me to climb into to the television set. “Come towards the light, Carol Ann.” Did I mention I had blonde stringy hair and blue eyes just like Carol Ann from that traumatizingly scary 80’s movie that I can’t even bring myself to say the title of?

Then another time I remember waking up in our large walk-in pantry. Apparently I had gotten up in the middle of the night and walked downstairs to the kitchen and “tried on” all of our paper sacks from the grocery store. (People do strange things when they sleepwalk.) I recall feeling like Goldilocks trying to find the one that “fit” just right, but they were all too small. I woke up from my walking-and-shopping slumber just as I was trying on about the fifth one. I always did have an eclectic fashion sense.

And finally, the most memorable and (probably the most humiliating) sleepwalking episode took place during a vacation the summer I was twelve years old. My sister and I were camping with my grandparents in their RV. The dining table in their travel trailer converted into a bed, so that is where I slept… in the kitchen. My sister slept on the pull-out couch.

Well, one night, I woke up, completely horrified, as I had found myself sitting, or maybe squatting, perhaps hovering…yeah, hovering….over the vegetable crisper bin of the refrigerator.

Apparently, in my catatonic stupor, I had mistaken the fridge, or more specifically, the pull-out veggie drawer inside the fridge……

for a POTTY!!!!

Of course I woke up…<ahem>…”mid-stream” and um…..had to wait until the um…emptification of the bladder process was complete.

How on earth was I going to explain this one to Grandma?

Thankfully, my Grandma Joan has a wonderful sense of humor and was very gracious that night when I woke her up to tell her that the fresh produce she had just bought at the store wasn’t so fresh any more.

I watched her from behind while she was at the sink, trying to quietly conceal her laughter…her shoulders bobbing up and down and her head shaking back and forth as she cleaned up the “mess” I had made.

My family never let me live that one down. Try being a little sister to a big sister who knows THAT story. Sibling blackmail anybody? My sister owned me!

I’m glad I am able to look back and have a good laugh about all of this now. I also think I am starting to understand what Pastor Matt was talking about in his sermon yesterday.

Do you ever feel like you are sleepwalking through life? I do. I often feel like I am on “auto-pilot”….just doing the things I do every day without being fully aware of what it is that I’m doing.

I want to be more mindful, more present. I want to be more intentional in my actions and pursue a life of purpose. I want to connect more with my Creator so I can discover what he created me to do.

Tonight, I’m going to set my alarm to wake up a bit early tomorrow so I can spend some time reading my Bible (I’ll have to find it first and probably dust it off). This is my first step in being more intentional and finding purpose. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Click Here to watch Pastor Matt’s message.