XidongandLydiaChen - xidongandlydiachen

As newlyweds, our greatest challenge hasn’t been loss of independence, coping with quirks, managing finances, or any of the other challenges we’ve read about in our pre-marital books.  Our greatest challenge has been as simple as getting a good night’s sleep.

We thought we were prepared for anything: we read the books, did the pre-marital counseling, talked about all our weaknesses, smoked out our major differences regarding time, safety, even temperature preferences, but sleep?  Who would have thought this would be our greatest challenge?

“ and Xidong, why don’t we see you in Sunday school?” asks a friend of ours.  You guessed it – we can barely drag ourselves to second service in our sleep deprived state, let alone get up early enough to make it to early service.  “Okay, so why don’t we meet at nine on Wednesday morning?” another newly-made friend asks me.  My heart sinks.  I ask myself if I can make it out of bed to get there on time.  “And at what time would you prefer to make your interview?” the lady from human resources asks.  I make the interview for two in the afternoon, just to be on the safe side.  I don’t want to oversleep and be late.

Having barely been married for four months, we shudder to think of sleeping in separate beds, but what other option do we have?  We tell ourselves that this is a temporary solution; we just need to catch up on some sleep.  My husband can barely focus on his physics research, and I go through the day using sheer will power to get the errands done and keep up with the housecleaning.

“Honey, you said you would have me for better or worse, right?”  I ask my husband.  He reassures me of his devotion to me despite my zombie-like state.  “For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer …”  Our vows would have been more accurate if they added, “With sleep or without sleep.”  Maybe Lucy and Desi had a good idea after all with their two twin beds, side by side.  But the propriety of the 1950s comedy show leaves something to be desired.

“You should look into a sleep by number bed,” a friend suggests.  Or, “Have you tried earplugs?” suggests my mom.  But for two love birds who frequently steal the covers, sleep loudly, wake up at 2:30 in the morning and can’t get back to sleep, the problem seems insurmountable.  Another friend of mine, soon to reach her fifth wedding anniversary reassures me that it took her and her husband a year to get used to sleeping in the same bed.  I shudder – will I have to live with this exhaustion for a whole year?

Despite the frustration of this sleep deprived couple, several points offer comfort.  Certainly, we see the irony of our situation — we wait so long to finally get married and then once we have the pleasure of sleeping with each other, we now find that we don’t want to.  But we also see the humility in it.  We can never foresee, predict or avoid problems in life, they just come no matter how hard we try to avoid them.  And sometimes it is the simple things in life that we most easily take for granted, like a good night’s sleep.  So, we rest in our human frailty and say along with the psalmist, “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.”  And though our peaceful sleep may be slow in coming, we hope we can one day look back and laugh at our seemingly petty newlywed challenges.  But that will only happen after a good night’s sleep.