Sleepless in Conifer

 (From Daphne)

For a while now, Jim has lived in the hope of obtaining the patches that brought him such relief two years ago from his restless leg syndrome (RLS).  He has felt that the end was in sight, if only he could get hold of these miracle patches!  We finally were able to procure some, thanks to the generosity of some good friends who footed the bill for a month's experiment - but to our dismay, they are no longer having the effect they had before.  Jim has still been unable to go to sleep at night, because this restlessness kicks in, and it will often continue unabated until the early morning, 4 or 5 am, when he is finally able to fall asleep.  You can imagine the state he is in by the time he wakes up at about 7am, after only a couple of hours sleep.  He is desperate.  And so are we who live with him!

From time to time, some sweet, thoughtful person will ask me what it is like living with a person who is sleep-deprived?  I have to always think about it before I answer, because, like so many long-term issues in our lives, we all adapt, and forget what normalcy felt like.

So what is it like? One word I would use is frustrating.  Frustrating because when I am asleep, Jim often is not.  Then when I am awake, he is up, but not really awake if you know what I mean?  He spends his day in a kind of fog, distracted, not really there.  I have gotten used to this, and don't really expect more out of him than he is able to give, but I forget that this is not normal, nor how he used to be when he was getting proper sleep.  It was brought home to us this past week when we had good friends from France staying with us.  After several days of observing Jim, the wife made the comment, "Jim has changed since he was in France."  In what way, we asked?  "Well he seems not all there, easily distracted, not able to concentrate. Is it us?"  No we both reassured her!  It is him.  This is the way he is, and many have noticed it.  Our girls, our pastor, myself.

Another word would be loss.  Loss for Jim in every area of his life.  The ability to work, function, engage.  He cannot focus so he cannot build into others' lives as he so loves to do.  He is battling to build his new business because he just cannot concentrate on the task at hand.  We told the church team here that the Jim they know is not the Jim that really is.  If ever he can get his sleep cycle back, they will not recognize the man for the energy he would have!

So what is there to do?  When all medicine has failed, all home cure remedies, all doctor's advice has fallen short of a cure.  For some reason, I have had the feeling all along that this was something God wanted to heal without modern medicine.  Something He wanted to do to teach us something about Himself that we have not yet grasped.  For a while now He has been teaching me about prayer, and in particular, persevering prayer.  He has impressed on me the story of the persistent widow, and how her request was finally granted because of her persistence alone.  It seems persistence is something that God takes note of.  In a good way.

In the past, I would pray for something like healing - once.  After that I felt that God had heard, and it was up to Him whether or not He wanted to do it.  I was not to "manipulate" Him through my nagging or asking repeatedly.  From scripture I am seeing that God is not such a prude as I imagined Him to be!  I was struck in the story of Elisha raising the widow's son from the dead how he tried several things:  first his servant placed his cane on the boy's face.  No response.  Next Elisha prayed.  No response.  Then Elisha stretched out on the boy's body.  The body grew warm, but he was not breathing.  Elisha then paced the room and lay out again on the boy.  The boy sneezed seven times.  Then life was restored to him!  It seems God was asking persistence from Elisha!  You can read the account in 2 Kings 4 for yourself.  It seems that in scripture, God often required ongoing, multiple prayers from His people before He would act.  I think it has something to do with growing our faith!  That is certainly true for me.

So would you join us in consistent, ongoing, persevering prayer for Jim to be healed from this malady which is driving him insane and robbing him of his quality of life?  His sleeplessness affects him adversely in every area of his life, and in every relationship.  There is no good thing that is coming from it, and Jesus told us that while the enemy comes to kill, steal and destroy, He has come that we might have life, and have it abundantly.  That is the promise we are standing on as we fight this battle.  Please join us in the fray!!