The Discipline of Staying In Bed

Le Lit: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed

(1 Corinthians 15:51)

I’ve started to stay in bed. More often. For longer. It’s become a spiritual discipline. For those of you who love your beds, especially in the morning, this seems a trifle blasphemous. And suspiciously too easy. Like giving up Lent for Lent.

Not for me. It’s hard for me to stay in bed. And now, staying in bed, is a practice I’ve had to work hard at doing. I am going through the psychological training that will - hopefully - result in my staying in bed becoming my reflexive action/inaction.

It goes a little like this:

Unconscious incompetence: I didn’t know I could stay in bed rather than get up.

Conscious incompetence: I know I could stay in bed. Why am I getting up?

Conscious Competence: This staying in bed thing. It’s hard, right? But let’s do it.

Unconscious Competence: Zzzzzzzzzz

What has brought about this new conviction? Why am I forcing myself to stay in bed?

I loved Alan O Noble’s little tome “On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living”. But if I’m honest, staying in bed is the harder option for an activist such as I.

One of the primary reasons I stay in bed longer in the mornings is because of death. Really? Should that not force me to get up and carpe deim and all that?

No. Not for me. But before you demur, let me explain some of my reasoning.

In just over a week’s time Jill and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. We lay in bed this morning, the Sydney sun breaking through the clouds and into our room. And we talked about death.

We talk about death quite a lot these days. And we seem to stay in bed together in the mornings a lot more than we used to. So we stay in bed and sometimes talk about death. As those approaching sixty, we both know that death is - statistically speaking - more immanent than ever.

Not that we speak about death morbidly or all of the time. But we do speak about it mournfully and more than occasionally. We lie next to each other in the mornings, knowing that unless Jesus returns in the next two decades, there will be a point at which there is not one of us for the other to lie next to in bed.

I have considered this fact often, and increasingly, over the past five years. And so I have disciplined myself to stay in bed more often.

Now you notice that I said that we speak about death “mournfully”. That seems about right. Mournfully seems about what it should be, given our frailty. Given our “mistiness”, as the Preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes.

Even as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, and even as those confident of the resurrection, we can consider death from a mournful perspective.

Death is defeated by and in Christ. For sure. But death had to be defeated. It is an enemy. An insatiable one that is forever banging at the gates of our lives, rattling the bolts and chains and reminding us of its presence. Sometimes even waking us up at three am with a particularly morbid howl.

Death will one day take one of either Jill or I before the other, unless of course some terrible car accident or the like. There will be one cold, dreadful first morning of waking up not next to the other. Sure that’s happened when travelling and the like, but this? This would be different.

It’s one of the reasons I want to stop doing so much work travel. I am counting down the mornings left to lie in bed next to Jill.

I have thought about death all of the time, from my youth up until this very point that I am writing, sipping a coffee, and enjoying the open-windowed early autumn balminess of this adopted city of ours.

Many people were surprised when we upped sticks from Perth and moved to the slick busyness of what has become the most amazing place I have ever lived. But part of the reason we did it was because of death.

Not because we feared death. Not because we wanted to cram into our lives all of our pleasures or hopes and dreams and goals. But because we didn’t fear death even though we were mournful about its encroach.

The hope of the resurrection means that even this risky - and expensive - move is not some sort of zero-sum game. None of our chips were in this basket. Not really. Not remotely. And that’s down to the resurrection.

The fact of approaching death has changed my habits. That’s true of many people. For some it means adultery. For others it means the world trip they always wanted. For others it means settling ones affairs and leaving a legacy.

For me it means staying in bed. For me it means that although I wanted to get up early and run this morning, - and indeed can now run again after recovery from hamstring surgery, - I didn’t.

A decade ago - maybe even as little as three years ago - normal running services would have resumed by now. But not this morning. Not many mornings at all. I’ve taken to doing the very thing I don’t like to do - run in the afternoons.

Somehow I seem to prefer to stay in bed in the mornings, even though I know a run is good for my cardio. Even though I know it will help me lose the stubborn three kilos I want to lose, so that I can fit back into those slim, stylish bottle green corduroy trousers I spent way too much money on, back in New Zealand in 2024.

Staying in bed does not seem like a discipline. But for me it is. And I have become ill-disciplined over the past fifteen years. Since discovering the love of running, I have embraced it vigorously like a lover; illicitly sneaking home to a still-quiet house, trainers in hand, hoping no one noticed my absence.

It’s never been hard for me getting up for a run - whether a short run, intervals, or the dreaded Saturday 35km “longie” deep into a marathon training bloc.

Sure I am often tired. But it’s never, ever been hard. Never been a problem rolling over, switching off the alarm, stumbling into shoes, shorts and singlet (or long-sleeve and gloves depending on the season), fumbling for my Garmin, and heading out the door.

But suddenly it has become hard. Somehow the mornings of staying in bed have become more urgent. Like I’m training for something. Like I’m disciplining my body towards a task that is holy and proper.

Disciplining myself not for running, but for staying in bed, lying next to my sleeping wife, or holding each other and talking. Or waking up together in the morning to make love rather than finding time to fit that into the running schedule.

The window is closing on all those activities. Sure that may be some years off. But why risk it? Why shut the window on staying in bed with my wife earlier than I should?

And sure, the window is closing for running too at some level. I’m a lonely runner. I love running by myself. Jill’s death would not stop me running. But it would stop me lying next to her in the mornings, morning after morning.

So I discipline myself to staying in bed, knowing that in all likelihood we won’t get another thirty years.