My Life in His Hand

By Bek Craig

When I was 17, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome - a condition that does not have a clear cause or specific treatment. This means that I live in a constant state of exhaustion. No matter how much I sleep, what supplements I take, or how healthy a lifestyle I lead, I never wake up feeling rested. Just imagine living with COVID-fatigue for 16 years and counting.

Over the years, I have experienced periods of immense frustration at this condition. I used to envy the people around me who had the same level of ambition and responsibilities as me, minus the chronic illness. This sense of injustice at my lot in life would come and go, but for the most part, I had accepted it because I was still able to achieve “success” in all my endeavours.

However, the fatigue took a turn for the worse in 2019. I had not long started a new job in consulting, when I found that I was struggling to wake up for work or even stay awake once I got to work. And whenever I managed to keep my eyes open, the brain fog was so intense, I might as well have been sleeping. At first, I thought it was the usual flare up I get every other month that lasted a week or so before returning to “normal” levels of fatigue. But after two months of suffering, I started to panic. I was working from home a lot, but all I was doing for 90% of my day was sleeping, and the simplest tasks like sending an email required an hour nap to recover.

The breaking point came when I decided to walk five minutes up the road to get coffee one morning, and needed to sleep for three hours to recover. I remember dragging myself for a walk around the block to pray that evening. Vision blurred from fighting back tears. Panicking. Mad at God. I kept saying, “God, you give me all these ideas, ambition, and opportunities, and You even call us to do all things with excellence… But then You allow me to have this chronic illness and You do nothing about it! This is so unfair. How am I going to hold a job? Who is going to look after me? Where is Your plan to prosper and not to harm me? How am I supposed to achieve Your will for my life when all I can manage to do is sleep? And everyone at work knows that I’m the only Christian there, what kind of testimony is this?” When I was done ranting, God gently but firmly chastised me. “Do you think that I need your energy to fulfil My purpose? As long as you walk with Me,