I can't sleep.

The day has come. My doctor put me on prescription sleep medicine. I'm now one of those people. I told her the drill, that I'll just lay there for four hours going over all these options and variables, going through what if's and big schematic hypothetical situations and wondering what would happen with certain people and places and responsibilities if I stay and hate it, if I go and hate it, etc. She cut me off and told me to try and stay away from stressful situations. I laughed. So, sleeping pills might be my least favorite things in the whole world. First of all, I would just like to say that Ambien is not as wonderful as the commercial makes it out to be. You know how they say "don't take this unless you can devote at least 8 hours to sleep"? Well they mean the "at least" part, I took some at midnight, slept through my 9am alarm, and woke up at 3:30pm, and then was so drowsy that I could barely make it into the kitchen to make a pb&j before I went back to sleep for a lovely 6-hour evening nap.


So now I'm left to my own devices to start sleeping like a normal person again. I've tried everything; warm milk, sleeping on the couch, sleeping in the guest room, eliminating sugar and caffeine intake (and that is a BIG deal), and last night I even tried sleeping at a friend's house. Best friend Caroline's house, actually. She even has one of those neat sound soother things that makes the noise of the rainforest or beach, and I just laid in bed for 2 hours like usual. I went down to her living room at 2am and her dad was still up, so we watched Cops for about half an hour, then he went to sleep and I started reading a John Piper book I brought with me. It's actually legit, it's called "What Jesus Demands From the World" and it's one of the books I ordered on a whim for my trip to Colorado, but didn't actually take it with me on the plane because it's a 600-page hardback. But I'm about 50 pages in and I'm hooked. I basically underlined everything. So far he's talking about the logistics of God-glorifying obedience to Jesus, not really into the meat of anything yet. But each chapter is a demand of Christ, like I've read "You Must Be Born Again" and "Repent" and then chapter three is "Come to Me" and bravo, Piper. The chapters are really short, there are only 50 and some of the more major ones are lengthy, obviously, but the introduction to the book talks about the authority of Christ, one section particularly about the atuthority and intimacy under the Final Commission:

You can feel the two come together in what Jesus says on either side of his final command to make disciples. On one side he says, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18). And on the other side he says, "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). The one says, "I make demands because I have the right. All authority in the universe is mine." The other says, "I make demands because I will help you. I will be with you forever."

I'm intrigued. I haven't been this intrigued about a book...in a while. That could be because I've read "The Shack" three times while I was at Frontier, and also because I've been on an emotional purity (yes, I read "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and I liked it. I could do a whole dang blog just on that business) kick for the last few months.

Anyway...my three best friends from home ship off to college in this next week. Lauren goes off to Wheaton on Wednesday, and then on Saturday, Bridget will be off to Roanoke College and Caroline leaves for Carson-Newman. Sad day. I guess it's not too awful, because I did this to them last year, but we're all pretty spread out now and it's not like Lauren can fly in from Chicago every weekend. I just love each of these girls with a deep part of my heart, we've been through just about everything with each other. And at any given time, some combination of the four of us is usually in some heated argument, or calling someone else out on their crap, or some derivative of non-compliance and I love it. Someone's always wrong, and I've been wrong with them plenty of times and it's taught me when to suck it up and swallow my pride and admit that. And it's taught me to be strong for them, since I'm the oldest I'm sort of the one who flew off in the real world first and had to report back on all the big scary things out there, and it's forced me to stay accountable. Because when your three best friends are girls, there are no secrets. You can't say anything to one that you don't want the other two to know. And I've learned more about honesty and integrity from that alone. And I love that we can talk about real things, like God and rapture and the end of the world, and they're not afraid to tell me that they don't like Young Life, and I'm not afraid to tell them that they spend entirely too much time with my boyfriends, and they're not afraid to shove in my face the fact that just because I'm older, it doesn't mean I'm always wiser. I love them. So this week will be pretty rough. Because as much as I hate all of our dumb arguments and drama, I'm gonna miss it big time.

I am beyond exhausted, I got back from Caroline's going-away party at midnight and then went for a run, followed by P90X Abs. All in an attempt to fall asleep. Here goes nothin'.