Nighttime is loneliest time for people losing heart, losing jobs and enduring change in today's world

You may have noticed that a lot of my blog posts come late at night when normal people are sleeping.

I'll readily admit I'm never been a normal person for good and bad. It has always been tough for me to turn off the brain. And when I was a Tennessean columnist, it was more out of excitement about a new angle to surprise readers or a new way to bring different people together for a common political or humanitarian cause that kept me awake plotting and writing.

Now it is because my life is in change, needed change. And my young kitty cat has found it tough to get used to a studio apartment compared to the roomier confines of a 3,000-square-foot Brentwood home. So I walk the long apartment halls with his favorite string to tire him out and address his vampire hours.

But I chose divorce out of necessity. Besides, a woman is the person who makes a house a home. A man can and should come and go. It is less dangerous for him, too, in the outside world.

Yet I have been privileged and most saddened to meet people on my journey who don't sleep at night because they have lost a job and are trying to figure out how much of a Christmas to provide their children and how much they can really hope for when it comes to an adequately paying employment future.

I really wish I could help them to allow them to sleep. I wish the economy and executives were more forgiving and skillful. I wish these good folks had put aside more money in better times. But hindsight is always easier and most unfair. I wish there was a magic wand to make it better for these people who have worked and provided all their lives, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.

There is one church that is working on a way to provide more sleep-filled nights, and I'll be working with the effort to give relief in body and soul to some Middle Tennessean families. I'll post about this needed effort when the church is ready.

So my sleepless night posts are conducted with a much lighter and blessed heart. Pray for this growing number of Tennesseans and Americans longing for sleep, and once under, a better world to wake to.