Late Nights and My Need for Quiet

Here I am, sitting up late into the night once again. Every morning when I have to drag myself out of bed, completely exhausted, I tell myself to start getting to bed at a decent hour. I even set my sleep/wake alarm on my phone to remind me each night. And I get a sweet lullaby reminder that it’s time to get ready for bed but I like to stay up late into the night so that I can have my much needed quiet.

When everyone else is in bed or at least in their rooms and the only sound I hear is the humming of the dishwasher it’s my call to sit in the quiet and read or simply enjoy the quiet. I’m on the run all day long, I don’t want to go to bed. I want to sit, in a quiet house. It’s absolutely wonderful!

I’ve been bombarded with messages lately about self-care. I’ve even been the one to share about self-care and how important it is. It’s important to get to bed by 10 pm, I know it is, and yet here I sit.

While I know this, the thing is, I’m giving of myself from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to bed and quite frankly, I’m exhausted. More reason to get to bed on time right?

Maybe, but I also feel a deep longing inside to sit in the quiet. Sometimes I want to sit just to read, sometimes it’s to write and sometimes just to sit in the quiet.

This is part of caring for myself. I know very intimately my need for quiet and grounding. If I go for too long without it I get snappy and irritable. Sometimes, I can be downright unpleasant to be around.

I’m a homeschool mom and right now I’m spending a lot of time on the road driving my two older daughters back and forth to work. Some people love driving but it stresses me out. I need quiet and stillness every day in order to be a good mom. I don’t have little children grabbing for my attention all day anymore, but I have big kids with bigger problems and long talks. They need me to drive them places, to listen to them, to watch movies, and to remind them what big words mean.

I still have a little guy but he insists at the age of nine that he’s no longer little. He won’t let me call him “Little Man” which is what I began calling him the first moment I laid eyes on him and heard his husky cry. While he’s not so little anymore he still needs cuddles and story time. He needs game time, going for walks, exploring, playing and Ninja Warrior running through the house.

I’ve been a mom long enough to know that while I’m exhausted right now and shouldn’t stay up this late, this season of my life will pass all too quickly, just like those other seasons of nursing newborn babies, sleepless nights, toddler meltdowns and big sloppy kisses, teenage emotional explosions and late-night ponderings about the meaning of life or at least about the urgent need to decide what they want to be when they grow up.

One day, it will always be quiet here in my home and I’ll need to go hang out at their house!