Not Sleeping and on to Accepting

Now here's a problem that you don't hear so much about with Lupus. Insomnia. I woke up about 3:30 and for the last hour have been cleaning up my email account. I'd rather be asleep. This has been a problem for quite a few years but has gotten much worse in the last year or two. I am not working and rarely must be up in the morning or doing anything vital so this is merely an inconvenience, possibly an annoyance. However, when I was trying to work every day it was one of the many large and small problems that made life very difficult. I do have several options for sleep aid (as a matter of fact, I took a mild medication for it around 9:30 last night) but I prefer not to take them if possible. When I was working, I didn't always have a choice. Trying to work all day five or six days a week has been hard enough for quite a while without a lack of sleep.

I have to admit that since I have been on disability, from June, I am frequently amazed at the fact that I was able to work full time for so long. It's amazing what one can do when you have to. When I was working that was almost literally all I did do. I got up and dragged myself through getting up & ready in the mornings, dragged myself through the day, came home and recovered to do it again the next day. So many days (almost all for the last many months I worked) I would have to find a few private minutes here & there to give in to exhaustion & tears so I could go on a bit longer.

It is amazing what a person can do if they persevere. We can push ourselves minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month when it seems impossible to go on. However, I've discovered that there is a limit, I call it The Wall.
All of my life with lupus I've been able to persevere. I've thought of my disease as the enemy and I have been at war for approximately 25 years. Sometimes the enemy was quiet and hidden but usually there were battles to be fought. I've had to remain vigilent because if I allowed any weakness on my part, the enemy would gain ground. I eventually learned that there are times when the enemy is stronger than I am and I would have to give in. But just for a while. Even in times of surrender, I knew I had to start fighting back as soon as possible, for even though surrender was often inevitable, it could be a trap from which it can grow harder and harder to escape.
So I've fought. I've always felt that though the battles didn't always go my way, in the long run I've been the stronger.
Only in the last (approx) year have I felt that maybe the enemy is getting stronger than I am. Maybe little by little the tide is turning and the enemy is winning. I still continued to fight but more and more it took everything I had.
And then I hit The Wall. This is when I learned that human endurance has a real limit, one that my will cannot overcome. I calll it The Wall because unlike in the past, this time I couldn't push on through it. I didn't understand right away but it finally became obvious that I'd lost a big battle, the biggest yet. I had to let the enemy take a big part of my life in order to save the rest. A strategic withdrawal.
It hasn't been easy to give in. It's something I'm still learning to accept and deal with. As in the past, I have to surrender but continue to fight to keep from giving more than I have to. As has been learned by many people in many situations I am learning that surrender can lead to good things. I now have so many of the things that I had to give up in the past just to survive. Now that I am not devoting my life, energy and will to a job I can use what I have for more important things. Most of all my family but also simple pleasures I haven't have time or energy for.
I've been surprised that after giving in to my new situation my health is not much better than I was when I quit working as far as what I can handle on any given day. I do pretty well day to day, here in my home with plenty to occupy me when I need to rest.
However, it doesn't take much to show me that I still am not back to what I was. I don't know if I ever will be. I haven't given up hope. Just because improvement is slow doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. But if this is how it is, I'm learning to accept it and be glad in what I have. I am learning to thank God for what is and pray that He will help me make more of whatever I have.