Sleep is intrinsic to the human condition. There is usually no guilt heaped on top of tiredness, at least between the hours of eleven and seven. Some people manage to get by with less but eventually the exhaustion starts to wear you down.

In our house, there is a night shift and a morning shift. John is often on his computer hours after I have tucked myself in, and most mornings I leap out of the covers to get some work done before anyone else's eyes flutter open.

Yet we do not generally wield a lot of arrogance about the fact that people sleep at different times. I have sometimes thought that our house is better protected, for the skewed schedules we keep.

It could be said that "Lori wrote stories about marriage while John slept."

Eve was created while Adam slept.

I have often just let that slide around inside my brain, wondering what it means. It does resonate with what some women say about the level of awareness their husbands have about relationship needs. Wives are often riveted, if not obsessive, about the marital dynamic, while husbands may be on auto pilot for years. But is it also helpful to make husbands wrong for a condition that God apparently designed? I think about our marriage every day. Does that make me somehow praiseworthy? I am awake, while he is asleep. 

There is an area in which I hibernated for the better part of our marriage, with not a whisper of condemnation from my husband. I was not alert to the fact that John shuns adultery. I had no clue. He had me, so what was there to work on? I was comatose to the male experience.

"John protected their marriage while Lori slept." That means I did nothing to support him in that effort, nothing to encourage him. It is hard to appreciate things when you are snoring.