Thought of the day #22

This is something I wrote on May 21, 2023.

“Yesterday was a difficult day. It started with sadness and ended with sadness. I had on my heart my best friend and the grief she was going through from the death of her son; my dad in the hospital, unable to feed himself or walk; and a couple of relationships that had become complicated. It took a lot of mental energy to navigate these. I clearly didn’t have the bandwidth to function properly that day or engage with others.

I decided to go on my computer to move some things in my schedule around to fit how I was doing. As I sat on my computer, I immediately felt light headed and paralyzed. I abruptly said to my family I am going to bed. I have a medication the doctor prescribed me to control when an episode of severe panic attack hits me. I honestly didn’t want to take it; I felt I should be able to manage this, but I began to feel even more physically weak, so I took it.

I laid in bed most the day and was asleep in the early evening. I woke up at 12:00am soaking wet. I sometimes get hot flashes at night and this one was bad. I got up still physically drained, changed my clothes, and placed a towel on the wet area of the bed so I didn’t have to wake up my husband to change the sheets since he wakes up at 4:00am to go to work. Although I felt drained, the paralyzing feeling was gone, now I just felt weak.

In the morning, I woke up feeling better and relieved that the turmoil in my body had passed. In my reflection time, I am comforted by Revelations 21:4 NLT  ‘He will wipe every tear. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. All these things gone forever.’

I still feel flooded with sorrow, but God has added hope so I can breathe.

I dislike when I have panic attacks that lead me to losing control of my body; in fact, they have been fierce lately. I am grateful however, for when relief comes. The medication helps, but more than that, it is the hope that what I am going through is temporary and it will pass even if in the moment it feels like it will last forever.