Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses

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Authors: Pam Vredevelt
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exhausted from adjusting to the reality of his handicaps, illnesses, sleepless nights, and the fluctuating hormones in my postpartum body. I had to force myself to eat three healthy meals a day. I had no creative energy for cooking fancy meals, so I had to simplify everything. The objective was to get something from each of the five food groups (meat, dairy, fruit, vegetable, and starch) every meal. I relied on simple cuts of meat, convenience foods, and recipes that were quick and easy to prepare. During that year, we barbecued on the gas grill several times a week and frequently used the rice cooker. Fruit, nuts, and protein bars provided quick, energy-boosting snacks between meals.
    While I’m sure there were days when I didn’t hit my objective, at least I had a target to shoot at. Remember the old saying: If you aim at nothing, you’re sure to hit it. On days when I was more disciplined and stuck with the program, my stamina was significantly better, and there was a marked difference in my emotional energy.
    Sleep is another of our most important needs when we’re in the process of letting go. I remember talking with a mother whose eleven-month-old baby had died after complications from surgery. “All I want to do is sleep,” she complained. While it’s a fact that one of the red flags of depression is wanting to sleep more than necessary, I was puzzled by her remark. After her baby died, she had taken a full-time job and was putting in ten-hour days as an executive assistant. I asked her how much she slept, and she said, “From 9 P.M. to 7 A.M. ,” as if this were a ridiculous amount of time to be in bed.
    It had never crossed this woman’s mind that she needed the extra sleep because of the heavy emotional burden she was bearing—not to mention the stress of learning a new job! From my perspective, those ten hours of sleep didn’t point to pathology; they indicated good self-care. The body needs time to restore and replenish itself when we are carrying heavy emotional loads.
    “For those who are suffering with symptoms of anxiety and depression, I’m going to save you $120 right now,” I said to a group of professionals gathered for a stress-management conference. “You can significantly reduce these symptoms by getting eight to nine hours of sleep a night.”
    Sleep is God’s celestial nurse who croons away our consciousness, and God deals with the unconscious life of the soul in places where only He and His angels have charge. As you retire to rest, give your soul and God a time together, and commit your life to God with a conscious peace for the hours of sleep, and deep and profound developments will go on in spirit, soul, and body by the kind creating hand of our God.
    O SWALD C HAMBERS
    As I expected, people fidgeted in their seats, smirked, glanced around, and gave me
the look.
You know, the look that says, “Yeah, right, lady! What planet do you live on?” Of the several hundred gathered in the room that day, very few raised their hands when I asked, “Who averages eight to nine hours of sleep a night?”
    We live in a fast-paced world, constantly struggling to meet its unending demands. We work, raise families, build marriages, tend to friendships, and try to cram in some exercise and recreational activities. Our daily planners are full of to-do lists. There are never enough hours in a day to get it all done.
    A friend of mine recently had his gall bladder removed. As a corporate executive, he was used to having a lot of energy and maintaining a high level of productivity, but recuperating was taking its toll. When he complained to his doctor that he was still feeling tired two weeks after the surgery, his doctor said, “Following this type of surgery, the body heals at a rate of 15 percent per month from the inside out—
if
a person rests and takes good care of himself. If you push too hard, you’ll delay your recovery.”
    When we suffer a major disappointment or a difficult loss, it’s

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