Sleepiness is weakness of character, ask anybody!

This semester has turned over a new leaf for me. Inspired by my wonderful roommate (who is real despite certain skepticism), I have come to know the real definition of an "all-nighter." In high school, I pulled an unhealthy amount of incredibly late-nighters which resulted in somewhere around 2 hours of sleep for the night, but I never dreamed of completely skipping over sleeping! I never even thought of it as an option! However, since we've been back from Christmas break, I've pulled a total of 3 all-nighters. Interesting things happen when you don't sleep. Sometimes it even results in this...

I know the picture is a little blurry, so to clarify, this is a picture of me (top left) sitting on a stone wall in my pajamas. Why am I sitting on top of a wall in my pajamas? you might ask. That is a fantastic question! Allow me to fill you in. A week or so ago I started watching Downton Abbey. (It's a fantastic show and if you've never seen it, I highly recommend doing so!) I quickly fell in love with it and found myself spending quite a bit of my day and night watching it. In fact, this particular night I did nothing other than watch it... Before I knew it, it was 6:30 in the morning! I looked over at my roomie, who also stayed up all night, and made a facetious comment about how we would be watching the sun rise pretty soon! She smiled and made the outrageous suggestion of going to see the sunrise from the roof of our administration building (which happens to be a stone castle - awesome, right?). After a night of no sleep, one's judgment is not exactly spot-on. I jumped at the idea and my roomie and I rushed over to get to the roof before the sun rose. Long story short, this stone wall was jutting out from the particular part of the roof we were on and it seemed like a perfect place to sit to wait for the sun to rise. My roommate, who is much more skilled at the art of all-nighters, is not, as you can see, sitting on the wall with me because she was standing on the much wider, much safer part of the roof, laughing at me.

It may not have been the safest life choice I've ever made, but (as evident by this post) I didn't die so that was good. Before the actual sunrise we had to wait  much longer than we anticipated...in the cold...in our pjs...on a roof..., but eventually we got to watch the sun come up. And it was remarkably beautiful!

One thing I love about the sunrise is that no matter how many times you see it, it never ceases to be magnificent. It makes me think of the verse in Lamentations where it says that the Lord's mercies and His compassion are new every morning. Jesus' mercy never stops being extraordinary even though it's there every morning. There's always something new to learn, new to discover, new to appreciate. When something is always there, it's tempting to take it for granted. But just like the sunrise, the mercy of God is beautiful and new every time we see it! I never want to stop appreciating the breathtaking beauty of the sunrise, and I especially never want to stop appreciating the unimaginably amazing mercy of God. I'm so thankful I got the chance to witness this little glimpse of heaven - even if it meant I didn't get sleep. God is good, all the time. And that never gets old!