It's 4 a.m. Once again I lie there, staring into the dark. It has only been 3 ½ hours since I drifted off to sleep. By yesterday, the end of the week, I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open, yet here I am, after barely 3 hours of sleep, laying here wide awake.
Unfortunately, this is almost a nightly description of what happens. No matter when I go to sleep, no matter how exhausted I am, I can look forward to 4, maybe 5 hours of sleep if I am lucky. As I lay there wide awake at 4 o’clock, I know that by about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I will once again be exhausted, deciding if I need to nap, or to just pushed through. No matter what I decide, or how tired I am, I have a glorious 4 hours of sleep awaiting me.
To say it is frustrating, might be the understatement of the year. As I have begun this journey, I have learned that this is one of the joyous symptoms of Parkinson’s disease that most patients battle with. It is a cruel twist of irony, that when rest is so essential, it is also so evasive, and no matter how long I lay there, the result is going to be the same – I will be wide awake.
So many mornings I would lay there, and be frustrated and aggravated that sleep would not come, which would do nothing for me, except put me in a glorious mood for the day.
One morning as I was laying there, aggravated once again that I could not sleep, I started thinking of the people around me, and the Lord simply impressed on my heart to take a few moments and pray for them. Many mornings it would surprise me the people that came to mind, sometimes people I had not thought of in years, or people that were going through difficulties, or even people I knew only through my online support groups.
As I laid there in the dark, I would quietly pray – sometimes it was a general prayer (especially if I did not know a specific need), and sometimes it was a specific prayer for strength or for a need that they had. After I would do this for a while, I would walk downstairs, and just begin to write (which is how this blog got started).
Was my lack of sleep frustrating – absolutely, in some ways it still is! But I had a choice, I could be frustrated and aggravated all day and accomplished nothing, or I could take this frustration, and turn it into something useful and good.
You see we all have frustrations. We all have things that we wish we could change, big and small. Do I wish I could get more sleep – most definitely! Do I try things to help me get more sleep – many times. Yet even as I try to change this, I still have this daily choice, I can let my frustrations and challenges rule me, or I can, in a sense, take control of these circumstances, and find something good and useful in them.
Do I always have the right attitude – no. Do I sometimes get aggravated still – sure I do, I am human. But the longer I walk this journey, the more I realize this is a daily choice. Every day I will be presented with this choice, and it is my choice alone what I do with it. All I can do is take this one day at a time, and today I choose not to be aggravated, but look for a way to turn this frustration into something good.
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