2 Corinthians 12:9 "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness."

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Night Shift

I have a love-hate relationship with night shift.....

In the beginning of my husband's career, it was pure hate.  I did not like being home alone at night- that took a LOT of time to get used to.  We were newly married, new to town and knew few people, so I was lonely during the day and it was hard to not go and wake him up when I felt like talking.  I'm surprised he didn't lock the door to our bedroom so he could get some uninterrupted sleep!

Now I'm used to sleeping by myself at least 8 nights a month.  In fact, I enjoy not having to hear snoring while I'm trying to go to sleep.  I even enjoy having some time alone in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed.

What I don't like is trying to live during the day with someone asleep so nearby.  When we had our house built, we weren't thinking about night shift.  My husband was on a schedule where the latest he'd get home is at midnight..... sometimes later than that, but it was still easier than getting home at 7am and sleeping until 2 or 3pm.  So, without thinking about the chance of night shift in the future, we picked a split bedroom floorplan.  Our master bedroom is right next to the laundry room, the garage and the kitchen!   In our house, those are all the rooms with the most noise!

So, whether it's the laundry going and making noise, the mixer kneading the bread dough and making noise, closing the microwave and making noise or leaving the house and opening or closing the garage door and.....that's right, making NOISE, some days I just pray that my husband can sleep through it all!  And most days that's just what he does, thankfully!

The earthquake we experienced a few months ago, DID wake him up in the middle of the afternoon.....  But hopefully we'll never have to go through that again.

My kids have grown up with dealing with this issue of night shift and they are very good at being fairly quiet.  We don't believe in keeping a silent house while my husband is sleeping- he does need to be able to sleep with some noise going on.  But we do try to be more quiet than normal.

What I don't know is how the child we adopt will deal with this part of our lives.  I know it will take patience on our part as we introduce him or her to our crazy way of living.  It may even take some earplugs for Rich as the child/children forgets and runs screaming through the house (or maybe that will be me?!).


1 comment:

  1. My by is pretty loud and my husband also works night shift. We got him a sound machine at target so he could sleep through the noise. PS thank you for the date correction :-)

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