Yesterday, I received a newsletter from one of my most favorite doctors with this message:

This doctor is a good man – and a great healer. But this message totally pissed me off. It indicates that his patients who stop working don’t get well – as if that decision is the reason why they don’t get well.

There are a lot of people with chronic sickness who are able to continue to work. I applaud them for doing so and encourage them to continue if they can.

But many of us don’t have much choice in the matter.

I stopped working because I could not do the job. My job involved driving as much as 4,000 miles a month. I could not drive for multiple reasons (pain, nausea, confusion, and oh yeah, my feet would go numb and I couldn’t feel the gas peddle).

Driving aside, there were a lot of reasons I couldn’t work. I was literally bed ridden – unable to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time because I would get dizzy, throw up, and my neck and back would hurt so bad I would cry.

I had horrific migraines pretty much daily and had to turn off all the lights and sound.

I would get ice pick type pains that would cause me to drop to the ground in excruciating pain.

I was on IV medications several hours a day for 4 years. Medications that often made me sick or caused me to curl up in pain. They eventually helped get me out of bed – but the process was long and grueling.

Imagine trying to work with all that. I couldn’t even leave the house by myself, let alone function for work 10 hours a day. I couldn’t attend church or go to the grocery store. I couldn’t play guitar or garden.

I don’t regret laying down in this hole. It’s been almost 10 years and I am still climbing out of it. And I have a long way to go.

The decision to stop working – or anything else – is a personal one. If you can do life, do it!

But if you can’t, there is nothing wrong with taking time away from the world to take of yourself. If your body needs rest, do whatever it takes to get it.

Perhaps the people who don’t lay down in the hole recover because they aren’t as sick as those of us who have no choice.

Fight for yourself. Even if it means you have to crawl into the hole just to get the rest you need.