Okay, so I was able to figure this out. Unrelated to the issue, I was doing some research and decided to get rid of Norton 360, which I had installed. After uninstalling, I noticed that my lighting was no longer freezing. In hindsight, I believe this was being caused by the gaming function in Norton, which disables background processes to free up resources during gaming.
For anyone running into this same issue, try uninstalling Norton. If you don't wish to uninstall, disable the gaming function. If you don't have Norton, check your antivirus suite to see if it has a similar function. If you are running any 3rd party software that also performs a similar function, try disabling/uninstalling it.
I hope this helps.
