Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves.

• Psalm 127:2

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
    consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
    no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
    and gathers its food at harvest.
How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
    When will you get up from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
and poverty will come on you like a thief
    and scarcity like an armed man.

• Proverbs 6:6-11

So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

• 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8

Do not love sleep or you will grow poor;
    stay awake and you will have food to spare.

• Proverbs 20:13

A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
and poverty will come on you like a thief
    and scarcity like an armed man.

• Proverbs 24:33-34

About the photo above, my wife and I were at the Christian Bookstore, about an hour’s drive from our house, but the closest one.  She had said something about needing a sleep mask.  Kidney dialysis lasted for four hours and they “loved my wife so much” that they put her in the corner, where the dialysis machine broke down more often, where the television rarely worked, and sometimes without a neighbor to talk to.  They put “baby in the corner” because she asked the doctor questions.  It might get back to the doctor that they were taking dangerous shortcuts that made their job easier… and most of these patients were going to die anyway.

Did I just write that out loud?!  Don’t get me wrong.  My wife had one nurse, the one who trained everyone else, and one technician on her “Do not touch me” list.  She had them touch her and within a couple of hours she would be in the emergency room, fixing what they messed up.  But there were other nurses and technicians that loved the patients.  They are not all bad, but the survival rate is not that good either.  It could get to you, but if I were a nurse, I would look for a different job rather than taking my frustrations out on the patients.

So, my wife got the idea that she wanted to sleep, but the lighting was bright for the nurses to do their job properly.  I was the one that found the sleep masks, and I think it was my wife who decided on “Five More Minutes.”

The next day, at dialysis, she tried it out, but the nurse kept fiddling with one thing or another.  My wife got no sleep at all, but near the end of her four-hour ordeal, one of the nice nurses or a nice technician said, “We need to get you ready to go home.”  My wife grumbled, “Read the sign!”  The attendant asked, “What sign?”  My wife, irritated for not getting any sleep due to equipment failures, and possible nurse incompetence (did I write that, too?!)…  My wife pointed to her sleep mask, and the good attendant doubled over laughing.  They encouraged my wife to get ready to leave because my wife’s husband (me) was already in the waiting area.

Okay, that was different.  My wife removed the mask and did what she could to be ready to go home, or maybe go by a store and get something on the way home.

But I took a photo of the sleep mask with it resting on one of my wife’s old pillows.  She has been gone roughly two and a half years now.  And I have had a hard time getting out of bed lately.

Whether I have had a poor night’s sleep or a great night’s sleep, I have taken my thyroid medicine and then gone back to bed.  I need to wait thirty minutes for that medicine to take effect before I can eat anything, but lately, I have fallen back to sleep for two hours.

Even that is not too bad in that I took my heart medicines at the same time as the thyroid medicine.  I have to wait until two hours after taking those medicines before taking my blood pressure and pulse-Ox.  So, I could take those readings before I physically get out of bed in the morning.

But here comes the problem, my body tells my mind, “Five More Minutes.”  I close my eyes and then check the watch.  Fifteen minutes have passed.  I tell my mind, “Five More Minutes.”  And then, without even noticing that I went back to sleep, another fifteen minutes has passed.

About this time, I pray, “Help me, Lord, help me.”

As I drift off for another bit of time, I am thinking that one day of doing absolutely nothing won’t hurt at all.

But a couple of minutes later, God answered my request.  “If you do not get out of bed now, you will die there.  You have seen it before.  You know how easy it is.”

Yes, I saw my wife addicted to the streaming service, watching old reruns, over and over.  For a time, after I got her the smart TV, she binged watched old shows, but then she missed the regular schedule of programming.  So, she invented her own.  She might watch something on regular TV, but once she was set to a particular hour in her viewing, she would watch an episode of one favorite television show, switch to another, and then another.  When I went in to check on her, I could tell when she was getting ready for bed, the rerun for her last television show of the night would be on.

But because she could not get up and do much of anything, that was her life.  Since she had seen those episodes before, she might have the sound low to allow herself to read the Bible.  But she struggled to fix me a meal once or twice each week.  I would beg her to let me finish, but she insisted that she had to.  But it took everything out of her.

But I have seen other retired people who did not have that obvious medical condition.  They would simply give up.  The television may have been their babysitter as a child, as it was mine.  So, why not return to that childhood and quit?

When God spoke to me, all those thoughts flashed through my mind.  I had seen too many people who simply wasted away watching television shows that they had seen countless times before.

But the ever-present call of “Five More Minutes” continues to haunt me.  The day that I wrote this, I took my morning medicines at 5:30am.  I awoke next at 9:00am, but then it was checking my watch every fifteen minutes until 10:45am before I got up.

Some of this may be an undiagnosed malady that has few symptoms other than lethargy.  My sister, who is eleven years older, says that I am getting old.  “Welcome to the club, Bub.”

But what keeps me from staying there in that bed is what God told me the other day, “If you do not get out of bed now, you will die there.”  That and the desire to continue to write and spread my thoughts about how God is so awesome.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.