Waking up

Last night it was Andrew's turn to pray. We have a little habit of squeezing in a thought or two (or more) about sleep. I think that carries over from when Rachel was a non-sleeper. Old habits die hard.

So usually we pray that she can sleep through the night. Can you blame us?

And then we pray that we'll both get a good night's rest and that we'll be able to wake up on time in the morning.

That last part is very important because Andrew is rather difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. He's done really well this semester and has only missed the early bus twice. It doesn't help that his daily Arabic class is first thing in the morning everyday. He has to be out the door before seven, which is rather early. For him.

So, last night after we'd finished praying I began to nag Andrew about the alarm clock. It's another one of our nightly rituals. For some reason he never wants to set it, even though it's on his side of the bed and he's the one who has to get up. So if you think about it logically...

Anyway, he finally rolled over to set the alarm and randomly decided to put it on the radio setting instead of the beep setting. I told him that that was probably a bad idea since I don't always wake up to the radio and will instead incorporate whatever dialogue or song into my dreams. Beeping just works better at waking me up. Andrew could sleep through anything...except being poked repetitively by me, or the threat of water being dumped on his head, both of which require me being awake first.

Since I didn't want Andrew to miss the bus a third time I suggested that I set the alarm on my cell phone as a back up. He thought that was a good compromise, so that's what we did.

This morning we woke up to my cell phone alarm.

Obviously I didn't have my glasses on, so I fumbled around for my cell phone and checked the time. 6:10 AM.

I squinted at the alarm clock. It's a new one from America that Karen brought over to Egypt for us. It has very big numbers so I didn't have to squint very hard. It read 5:10 AM.

"Get up!" I told Andrew, nudging him several times.

"It's 5 AM," he moaned, rolling over and putting his head under his pillow.

"Only maybe," I said.

"Huh?" he wondered sleepily.

"My clock says it's 6,"

"What?!" he asked.

So apparently our clock set itself back with the end of American daylight savings. It's a good thing we prayed to wake up on time this morning! So many blessings in life often seem like mere coincidences!