My head doesn’t balance on my neck but hangs down painfully. I spend the day trying tiny different position adjustments by trial and error, because a one inch shift of the neck makes the difference between levels of excruciating pain. Some positions become repeatable within certain known limits, but often I’m starting from scratch trying to reduce the pain as much as possible and get to where I can feel settled rather than all contracted in pain and beyond exhausted from the fight.
There are things we cannot do, unless our life depended on it, and then we would at least make the attempt. This is like being in that situation as a way of life, everything being too hard, every effort to make a shopping list or drag needed pillows and every little thing requiring heroic determination.
Then the sleep deprivation torture launches an attack and there is no way I can fight it on any practical level. I immediately meet it with the prayer of the heart, which takes over where everything else leaves off.
Guiding the soup spoon into my mouth is hard to maneuver because my chin is resting on my collarbone, and who eats while sobbing, anyway? Who does anything besides grab a drug when in agonizing pain?
This life doesn’t fit any standards I know of, which is why it’s so helpful to read the lives of saints and martyrs who led exceptional lives of suffering and forbearance under unthinkable conditions.
I no longer dwell on resentment as I used to, but am coming to accept this strange existence and seemingly unreasonable requirements for daily life as God-given. Or at least God-allowing. Certainly unusual, but understandable in the context of the spiritual life.
I didn’t know before what “human potential” could mean. Somehow I wanted to push that envelope, but I was still holding onto expectations of the limits of human suffering. I still insisted with childish petulance that my experiences should be “reasonable.” I should be reasonably comfortable – after all, the culture tells us we should be.
I am blessed with friends who remind me to pray. And that we’re in the best company of those who have lived this life of struggle, as we come to realize our utter dependence on nothing but God.
“Our elder, Father Joseph the Hesychast, used to say that his whole life was suffering.
One night, at midnight, when he was overwhelmed by deep sorrow, great sorrow, he went out into the courtyard and wept and wept…
He prayed to God to comfort him and strengthen him.
Then he heard a voice from heaven speaking to him:
‘Will you not endure this for the sake of My love?’
The elder fell face-down to the ground and replied:
‘Yes, my God, for the sake of Your love I will endure everything!’
And a light entered his soul that soothed the sorrow.”
May it Be Blessed: An Orthodox journal 