Counting sheep never works for me.

     Last night at 9:30ish while I was laying in bed watching TV I started feeling that "I think I could go to sleep" feeling. At 10:07 I decided that even though it was earlier than I normally go to sleep I would give in to the feeling. Soon there after I was off to sleep. I don't know what happened the next few hours, because I was asleep. That didn't last long though. At 2:24 I woke up staring at the alarm clock. I thought to myself I have a few more hours of sleep to go so I rolled over to continue my sleep when a thought ran through my head.
     I know it wasn't important at the time but for some reason it wouldn't leave my mind. Off and on all day on Sunday my wife and I had discussed our meal plans for the week but we had not locked any of those plans down. So I wasn't sure if I was supposed to go to the grocery store or not and if I was what I was supposed to get. It wasn't like I was going to get up at 2:30 in the morning to go to the grocery store. Ingle's wasn't even open. I was definitely not going to wake my wife up at 2:30 in the morning to make a grocery list. I was already on thin ice with waking her up because I was up at 3:30 on Saturday morning getting a drink out of a cooler and some fried chicken out of the fridge in our hotel room. Apparently, not everybody wakes up wanting fried chicken at 3:30 in the morning. My daughter laughed but my wife failed to see the humor in the situation.
     So as I tried to get the grocery list out of my mind many other thoughts came rushing in. Because of this being a holiday week I needed to do certain things earlier in the week and I tried to make a mental list of those things. I forgot to check my fantasy football teams before going to bed to see how I was doing. I really like the new Bojangles Rewards App. I already got a free 1/2 gallon of sweet tea. I didn't say any of these thoughts were important ones but they kept filling my head not allowing me to go to sleep. So I decided to count sheep. That is an old "can't sleep" remedy that I had heard since my childhood.
     It was rough in the beginning because I had never actually been told how to count sheep. Do you

imagine a pasture of sheep and count them? Do you imagine the sheep walking in front of you and count them as they pass? Do you just count sheep that you have seen? I went with imagining the sheep were walking in front of you. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, I am bored. So now I start imagining them jumping a fence. Four sheep, five sheep and now the fence turns into a ditch filled with fire. Six sheep, seven sheep, eight sheep and I am bored with white sheep. Nine sheep (a red one), 10 sheep (a orange one), 11 sheep (a yellow one) and I am bored again. So now not all the sheep make it over side of the fire ditch and some fall to be turned into lamb chops wrapped in bacon.  Twelve sheep (a green one that barely makes the jump), Thirteen sheep (a white one with black dots that didn't make it), fourteen sheep (a black one with flames on the side does a flip as it jumps over the ditch) and now it is a game.
     I tried to come up with the wildest looking sheep I could thank of and there are wolves trying to keep the sheep from making it to the other side. A sheep with a green Mohawk wearing camo and a black wolf with red face paint get into a death battle and both fall into the ditch which now has 12 foot flames and explosions. I was no longer actually counting the sheep. I was just letting my imagination run wild. I was having an enjoyable time until something interrupted me. It was my wife's alarm clock. I realized that in less than an hour it would be time for me to get up. So I put the sheep away and tried to go back to sleep but the grocery list came back to my mind. So it looked like the end to my sleep.
     Then I begin to pray. I prayed that God would take all those meaningless thoughts out of my mind so that I could return to sleep. I prayed that the one hour of sleep I had left would be as restful as the two hours I had missed. I prayed that...I don't know what else I prayed for because I feel asleep. I sleep good all the way up to the time my wife woke me up to tell me it was time to get up. I don't feel like I missed any sleep either. I should of started with prayer instead of sheep.
     Here is the kicker, I have taught myself that when I lay down at night and my mind goes to worries, troubles and how bad everything is to pray. Those nights I don't even think about sheep. When I feel my mind getting cluttered with things that I know I can think on or worry about all night I immediately go into prayer. I don't spend a lot of time praying about those things in my head instead

I pray for peace and rest. I give Jesus my burdens and He gives me peace and rest just like He says He will. But because it was silly things keeping me awake I thought I could handle it myself. I couldn't. I needed Jesus. So when your trying to sleep and worries or silly thoughts fill your head, pray. You want a good night's sleep? Pray for it. You can thank Him in the morning. After all, why count the sheep when you can talk to the Shepherd?

Parting Thought: Shouldn't a self addressed envelope be addressed to envelope?