I have not had a time of insomnia in YEARS! I fluctuate between crashing so hard I am asleep before my head hits the pillow (or I leave the baseball field like Thursday night!) and slowly drifting off to dreamland to the sound of an Alaskan reality TV show playing in the background (I vacillate, lately, between Alaska: The Last Frontier and Life Below Zero).

Tonight, however, not so much.

It could be the nachos we had for dinner date-night. It could be the 5 mile walk at 9 pm. It could be the 22oz (I know I should have gotten the 16oz!) Blue Raspberry Freeze from Speedway at 10:30 pm. Heck, it could be from the never-hit-REM-nap I tried to take.

Whatever it is = no sleepy-ville for me!

I have taken Prilosec to counteract the nachos…I  drank chamomile tea to do whatever soothing that is supposed to do…and here I still sit.

I am not anxious. I am not fretting.

I. Am. Awake.

Dan and I went for a “date-night” tonight in preparation for his going out of town essentially for the next two weeks (this coming week on a Mission Trip with our youth group and oldest son; the next week will be for work).

Our romantic excursion took us to Meijer first (those not from Michigan should know it is WAY better than Walmart and holds far more goodies!).

(NOT us, but you get the idea!)

THEN….onto  Home Depot…thrilling so far, isn’t it?

Nacho time next!!!

Here is where it gets interesting…we ate at a place we used to frequent that we have loved for their A-MA-ZING nachos. We also used to partake of certain liquid choices at this said establishment as well…which stirred up some memories of days gone by.

We chose, tea and water- in case you were curious, but then went for a “short walk” in my husband’s description after..

is MY description!

On this walk, we talked about old times and old temptations.

Not EVERYHING from our past was awful, but the good and the bad are so entwined that the common denominator holding it together bleeds into both sides. We drank a lot. All the time, as a matter of fact.

I have often wondered how on earth popping the top off a can of beer could be so darn entertaining but it had to have been because that was all we did with our friends. We played no games really, cards occasionally but not consistently. We watched games sometimes. We ate snacks a lot -I cannot figure out how I did not weigh 300lbs between the beer calories and the snack calories! We talked a ton with people….but what about, I have no idea.

I just know that we were fairly bored until that second or third beer went into us and then the party could start.

What a difference this night was from those Friday nights of our past!

And we feel good.

We are content.

After the police let us back into the park to retrieve our car (apparently the park closed at the vague time of “sunset” -?- and we were locked out of the lot with our car locked in!! Thankfully, two police officers just “happened” to be parked there and just “happened” to have just gotten the keys to this park- that was in another police jurisdiction anyhow- so they could kindly let us in. We thought FOR SURE we were calling someone to pick us up and then having to return tomorrow to get our car!)…anyhow, after we were let into the lot our discussion returned to the Days Gone By…

What if we been drinking tonight and came upon this situation?

What kind of trouble would our lack of sobriety caused with the Police?

What kind of trouble would it have caused between Dan and I?

In the past, something so minor (and without anyone’s fault-except it was NOT a “short walk” like Dan has initially tried to tell me; it was a 90 minute walk that began at 8:30 pm!!) could have caused a major reaction out of both of us. Dan would have been belligerent that someone would have the audacity to lock him away from his car and I would have gone into panic mode: reacting and over-reacting like a crazy person.

We laughed, instead, and said “well… thank God the police are sitting there…as if they are waiting for us”.

We had a ton of people to call who would have enjoyed the laugh with us over the crazy “OOPS” of this situation, we were not harmed or in harms way in any way, and we were still pleased with ourselves over choosing this “little” walk for our Friday evening date night.

Once back in our car and pulling out, I asked the Police Officers if they often parked at the entrance to this park and one answered with “no, we were meeting up here after returning from another call”.

I think God place those young men in our path to help us.

We were rewarded for our good choices.

Leaving the park we decided we were thirsty so we stopped for those darn slushies’…relishing the pure sugar indulgence, we sipped companionably while driving.

It was then that the contentment settled in.

Ecclesiastes 5:19 tells us that being able to accept your lot in life is a gift from God…I do not think I can put a price tag on that kind of gift!

Our life is NOT perfect. We have baggage. We have trials. We are overburdened,  over busy, and over loaded.

But…

we have peace.

We have the love of our Savior that binds us together now.

We have a security that our jobs cannot provide because it is eternity focused.

We have a hope for our future that will not disappoint us because it is grounded in the Lord- no matter what else may come our way.

We saw a piece of paper on our windshield after we drove for awhile…it said “you are NOT ticketed for the offense of parking after hours”…

We had not thought of that even being a possibility and laughed all the harder!

“Days Gone By” can stay gone…I am loving living abundantly today! If you haven’t tried it, it really works!