Bernadette Griffith

I don’t think this can be stated enough: being deaf is exhausting. It’s days like this that I wished I knew ASL, but that would mean teaching everyone I knew ASL as well. Quite the effort and not helping the exhaustion bit, but so it goes.

While I’m so very appreciative of all the tools that help me to hear in modern times, technology is also overwhelming and frustrating when it doesn’t work. Do you know that feeling when you’re looking for the television remote, you find it, and then, you realize it needs a battery? After you put the battery in, you see that there’s something in front of the sensor that it aims at? Finally, you get the remote working, you find the television show you want to watch, and it goes to commercial.

Yep. That x 100.

Recently, my phone application (Nucleus) and my processors for my cochlear implants stopped pairing. It messed up all the settings on my phone. I couldn’t stream YouTube to my implants anymore, but I could stream phone calls. I tried to reset the app, repair the implants, reboot the phone, disable the app, and even delete the app and reinstall. Nothing was working. I was ready to scream. Finally, I reached out to my audiologist. She told me to schedule an appointment. She needs to remap my cochlear implants now. Until I meet with her next week, my cochlear implants sound different. Not bad, but there’s not as much clarity as usual.

Here’s the kicker: they’re officially out of warranty, and I need to upgrade soon, but I have to wait until my health insurance and cochlear implant company negotiate terms to cover the cost. If this isn’t the “check engine light” moment when your car hits 50k miles, I don’t know what is.

There’s also the exhaustion of constantly being hooked into technology. I’m getting old. I don’t even want to wear glasses anymore if I don’t have to. What am I talking about? I don’t want to wear pants half of the time! Haha. Well, not real pants. I love my pajamas.

As my Aunt Marge would say, “I need this like I need a hole in the head!” Wait… I have a hole in my head. Well, not really. I have an implant and electrode wire in my cochlea, so tomato, tomato. And I do really need this technology, so if this isn’t a lesson in gratitude and patience, I don’t know what is. I will attempt to focus on the ability to hear and let go of all these small inconveniences that pile up and make me take a deep breath. Sometimes, I can hear my dad saying to me as he would always say when he was alive, “Slow down!”

Maybe God is telling me to stop rushing around, accomplishing items on my task list like I’m in The Amazing Race or something, and be more present with those I love. That’s what I’m choosing to believe anyway until this all resolves itself. Patience is a virtue, and virtues take practice.

Come, Holy Spirit.