I should maybe preface this with a statement to the effect
that it’s been awhile since my last post. And it has been. My last entry may
have been read as a downer, but it wasn’t. During one hospital outpatient
program that I was placed in after a nine-day inpatient stay, we covered a lot
of territory about the suffering that accompanies mental illness. Coping skills
were taught, but the most amazing lesson came toward the end of my three weeks.
It was called “Radical Acceptance.” Deconstructed down to its fundamental
meaning, radical acceptance is accepting you have a mental illness, that it
causes suffering and sometimes, nothing can be done to change that fact.
There was a collective gasp among the participants, and some
wasted no time in saying it wasn’t fair. Others like me, sat in silence. Radical
acceptance was a radical concept. My mind flipped to the story of Job and
understood he had traveled an arduous journey through unbearable suffering, and
God’s response was this: accept it. I thought of Jesus and his radical
acceptance of the crucifixion. God had decreed there was no other option for the
redemption of humanity. Radical. Acceptance.
My last blog entry was, in fact, radical acceptance of chronic
sleep deprivation. I was no longer going to fight God. I was no longer going to
pray about it. It is what it is. In that place, something unexpected occurred. My
new psychiatrist insisted that I see a sleep specialist. I had undergone a
sleep study some twenty-five or so years ago and they found nothing to keep me
from sleeping. But she felt it needed to be looked at again. I’ll skip all the
steps and go straight to the point. The study concluded I had sleep apnea and
my oxygen level had actually dropped into the ’80s for a bit. Alarm bells went
off in the heads of the doctors. When I was given that diagnosis, I broke down
and cried. It meant something besides multiple sleeping pills could be done.
They were failing me anyway. Maybe there was a reason to hope.
In four days I am getting a CPAP machine. I had resisted
writing about this because what if it really doesn’t keep me asleep through the
night? I’m off work on FMLA again because things were moving. When I become so
sleep deprived stationary things start moving, then I’m in real trouble. I
shouldn’t be driving, and my job’s professional expectations are not being met.
I can’t do my job. I was told to go home and do not return until I am under
control again. So, I am at least not facing the public bleary-eyed and sluggish
of mind.
I still have radical acceptance. God is in charge and
whatever he wills, I accept. But I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit to having
renewed hope that something will happen. That I might get even six hours of uninterrupted
sleep. I am also humbly asking for prayers. I will write again when I have
tried out this medical marvel. People who have used them said it was life-changing. Well, I’m all about life-changing and morphing into Christlikeness.
I will be still and know he is God.
