A Healing Crisis
photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/
I don’t flatter myself that anyone’s waiting breathlessly for my next post, but here’s a brief post just to explain my sudden non-posting after just a month of blogging. I find myself in a bit of a health crisis. Not the painful or fatal sort, but difficult nonetheless. In short, I can’t sleep. Tests have revealed that I have almost no melatonin, which enables restful sleep, and that I also lack cortisol, which helps you get up in the morning. If you’ve ever experienced days in a row of little sleep (mothers of the world, my respect for you deepens all the more), you know what I’m going through. Marry that with a demanding new job, and you get the pile of mush that I currently am.
I am confident that I’ll eventually get this licked and return to my functional self. Until then, experimentation with sleep aids and their side effects continues. I will couch this time as a healing crisis, the darkness before the dawn. In being stripped down to the bare minimum, where I have almost nothing to give and can barely concentrate enough to pray, I recognize how much I rely on my own steam, and how large God’s kindness is in carrying me at all times. And in God’s economy, everything can be repurposed for the sake of uncovering and discovering the true self.
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I had just visited the site this morning and wondered where you were! I’m sorry about the sleep issues. NOT fun at all. With the baby no-sleep there is at least a cuddly reward, but this? Just crummy. 🙁
I love it that you wondered where I was! Thanks for the empathy, my friend. I actually got six hours of sleep in a row last night, so I may have found a remedy that works. Hope buoys me.
“Waiting” might not be just the right word . . . maybe ‘hoping you were well’ covers it better.
Remember Stephen Covey’s anecdote about ‘sharpening the saw’. Often, time and energy spent on YOU isn’t self indulgent . . . it’s wise investment.
Thanks, Greg! I have just enough energy tonight to check my email & saw your note & glad I did.
May the remedy be a permanent one, Heath! But what caused the loss of melatonin and cortisol? I’d never heard of these issues before. Maybe it just “happens”? (I’m a very low ferritin girl and they’ve never figured out the why of that, so I know the “we don’t have a clue” can be the only answer.)
Well, in my case, it is related to that time of life that’s politely referred to as perimenopause (but should be called “healthpause”). My hormones started going haywire about a year ago, and sleeplessness is just the latest manifestation. I’m taking DHEA to help create more of the hormones I’m lacking; hope that kicks in soon! Until then, time-release melatonin seems to be doing the trick.