The Tipping Point

The tipping point. I believe there is a popular book by that name. I have not read it. I do not know what it is about. I do, however, see a tipping point at work in life--or the life, anyway, of an MS sufferer such as myself. It is a point at which one challenge too many is added unto all the baseline, day to day challenges, and you suddenly fall right over the edge. You do not merely become fatigued or overtaxed; no, you fall clear off the world altogether.

My tipping point is emotional stress. I am otherwise good with stress of most other sorts. I am not stressed by money or time or flat tires or fender benders or missed appointments or broken dishes or lost house keys or the neighbor's dog or the war in Iraq or the price of gas, and so on. I am not stressed, in other words, by things that just happen, and will one way or another be fixed in due time.

But it is my heart that is weak, and soft as the freaking Pillsbury Dough Boy. It shall be the death of me yet.

Strange that the heart, that heartache should have such a comprehensive effect on the symptoms of MS and render me suddenly challenged beyond endurance. It adds itself to the struggle of MS and instantly overloads the entire system. The lights go out, all the machinery of muscles and cognition grind and sputter, and my soul itself seems to leak out and dribble away through the cracks in the earth.

I cannot think, I cannot walk. My bed is like a rack and the ground like a bed of nails.

I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.