[All-American]

Well, all other things aside, I would encourage you not to give up on addressing your sleep disorder. I'm not surprised that church counselors haven't been able to be of much help. I believe prayer is an essential part of managing life's problems, but I've never believed that prayer alone will solve them. Given the dramatic impact the disorder is having on your quality of life, I would make resolving or relieving it your top priority.

I think it's good that you're planning on making it back, and I think you have an appropriate time-table. If I may ask, though, what about your life in six to twelve months is going to be so different that you will be able to manage the additional load of stress induced by church activity? I can understand the need to take a breather when conditions don't permit you to keep up, but what reason do you have to believe that when you do go back, the overwhelming problems with which you are currently confronted are not going to be there again? Perhaps now is not the time to come up with answers to those questions, but I suspect that unless you do, you're going to find yourself in this position again.

I wouldn't presume to tell you how to make your life less stressful, and I don't know enough about you to be able to tell you how to make church less stressful. I do feel like I can relate in a very small way. There are still weeks where I get fed up enough with the ward that I go home early. When I can get involved, when there are people whom I am genuinely interested in seeing, when I am able to participate in the lessons and discussions, I get a lot more out of it.

In fact, that's a question I'd like to throw out to everybody else here. What kinds of things do you do to make the meetings more enjoyable? Or do you just grin and bear it because you know you should? Or do you not find any difficulty in getting something out of the meetings? If not, why?