Missed Alarms, Midnight Somersaults, and the Plank in My Own Eye

October 5, 2026

by Shelley

So I woke up late this morning, and I’m going to blame my son.

Yes, you heard that correctly. I am absolutely blaming my almost-four-year-old for ME waking up late. Motherhood has very few employee benefits, so let me have this one. 🤣

Okay, backstory.

Over the summer, my son gave up my emotional support “baba.”

MY emotional support baba. Because if we’re being honest, by the time he was three and a half, that bedtime bottle was doing just as much for my peace of mind as it was for his.

And before you come for me, HEAR ME OUT.

If you read my last blog, you already know that by 4 p.m., I’m hearing colors. I have been climbed on, touched, summoned, and used as playground equipment for hours. By bedtime, I’m ready to go to bed, and I need my tiny roommate to feel that same calling.

So yes, we held on to the baba longer than we probably should have. It worked for our household, and when he was ready to put it down, we did.

Apparently, what I didn’t realize was that the baba was also holding our entire evening together. Because once it retired, bedtime became a nightly experiment with approximately 500 different attempts to wind this child down.

We tried bubble tubbys.

Lovely experience. Clean child. Still wide awake.

Then we tried our rocket ship routine to help him regulate before bed. My son became the astronaut, and I helped him get ready for his mission. We put on the suit, tightened everything up, filled him with rocket fuel, and then…

BLASTOFFFF!

In hindsight, launching a small boy into space may not have communicated “it’s time to settle down” as clearly as I had hoped.

Mission failed. Astronaut still active.

Okay, back to our regular Bible story. Calming music. Soft voices. Whispers. Surely this would do it.

Not a chance.

Come 11 p.m., he was still crawling all over me and doing somersaults in bed like he had qualified for an event I did not remember signing him up for.

This weekend, bedtime looked more like midnight. By Sunday morning, I was so tired that I slept through FIVE alarms.

Five.

And the little man responsible for the midnight gymnastics? He slept later than I did. Peacefully. Like he hadn’t just worked me through an unpaid overnight shift.

We missed church.

Now, I could have let that turn into a whole morning of beating myself up. I already had plenty of material: we woke up late, we missed church, and clearly I still haven’t cracked the bedtime code.

Instead, while we got ready for the day, I put the service on the TV and listened.

And wouldn’t you know it, the sermon was centered around the very book of the Bible I had just started reading.

Coincidence?

Not a chance.

There I was, tired and running behind, and the message still met me right in my living room.

The verse in today’s sermon was this:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” — Matthew 7:3

Well. Good morning to you too, Matthew. Nothing like a little conviction before I’ve fully recovered from bedtime. 🤣

But seriously, how many of us have been guilty of this?

How often do we notice somebody else’s mistakes, faults, reactions, or bad decisions while conveniently skipping over our own?

I know I have.

I can tell you all day long what you’re doing wrong. But let “self-reflection” enter the conversation, and suddenly I’m feeling weak. I need to sit down. Possibly have a snack. We should revisit this when I’m feeling less personally attacked.

I joke. Mostly.

I’ve actually been doing an awful lot of self-reflecting lately. Looking at my reactions. My words. The things I still need to work on. Asking myself some uncomfortable questions and trying to stay in the conversation long enough to hear the answers.

But I used to be very guilty of pointing outward before looking inward, and sometimes I still am.

It’s easy to notice someone’s sharp tone and overlook the way I spoke when I was overwhelmed. Easy to expect patience while running low on my own. Easy to remember all the reasons behind my mistakes while judging somebody else’s mistake by what I can see.

I know my whole backstory. I know what hurt, what scared me, what exhausted me, and what I was trying to survive.

I don’t always know theirs.

And that got me thinking about my own life.

I’ve done wrong. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made decisions I wish I could go back and change. There have been times when I needed correction, help, and a whole lot of grace.

I’ve had people belittle me for those mistakes. People whose words made me feel smaller when I was already struggling to believe there was anything good left in me.

But I’ve also had people who loved me so much harder through those same mistakes.

My Aunt Vicki. My parents. My grandma. Just to name a few.

People who could see that I was struggling and still see someone worth loving. People who could tell me the truth and leave room for me to grow. People who didn’t shut me out when I needed them most.

Their love left a forever imprint on my heart.

I remember what it felt like to be loved when I wasn’t especially easy to love. I remember having people who still believed I could do better, even when I had given them plenty of reasons to be tired.

That kind of love matters. It gives a person somewhere to begin again.

And today, as I’m raising my own children and continuing to work on myself, I want to remember that. I want my children to know they can come to me when they’ve messed up. We may have a hard conversation. There may be consequences. But they will still be loved.

I want to carry that same grace into my relationships with other people, too.

Loving someone through a storm can take patience. Sometimes it takes an honest conversation. Sometimes it means having boundaries and still praying for them. Sometimes it’s as simple as refusing to join a conversation that tears them apart.

I won’t always get it right. There will still be moments when my mouth moves faster than my compassion, and I have to come back, own it, and try again.

That’s some of the work I’m being reminded to do.

So here’s your reminder, from one tired mama who missed five alarms and still received the message she needed:

Everyone experiences a storm or two in their life.

Before you decide you know everything about theirs, remember the people who stood beside you during yours. Remember who loved you when you were struggling. Remember how much that love mattered.

Love them harder.

And when you catch yourself studying the sawdust in someone else’s eye, take a moment to look at the plank in your own. I know I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.

I’ll be doing that work, raising these babies, and walking into another week with God’s grace and a good pair of Leviticus boots.

Hopefully on more sleep.

But given the astronaut currently living in my house, I’m making no promises.

Keep looking up! John 10:10

To support The Justice Project and the fight against human trafficking go to www.thejusticeproject.net

To purchase Leviticus Fashions boot designs go to www.leviticusfashions.com