Snort . . . gag . . . sniffle…
I almost never take sick leave. Part of the reason is that I don’t get seriously sick that often. Part of the reason is that my workaholism probably makes me go to the office at times when I shouldn’t.
This week was different.
I noticed Sunday evening that I was beginning to get the sniffles and figured that I had the typical winter cold. Monday I felt worse and took some over the counter stuff to try and feel better, but that evening I started funning a fever and recognized that something was out of whack. Tuesday I bowed out of a morning meeting and only left the house for a meeting at my daughter’s school that I couldn’t reschedule. However, when I got home the fever went up and I felt horrible. All that night I noticed that Grace was starting to cough, and on Wednesday, while I was at the doctor, they sent her home from school with a fever. She and I have basically laid around the house coughing and sleeping since then.
It’s not really the flu, the docs tell us. It’s not a bacterial infection either. It’s a virus thingy, but one serious enough to close five schools systems around our area.
Yesterday, I thought I felt better and my fever was lower, but by the evening it was back and I fluctuated between chills and sweats all night.
However, this evening, I am starting to feel better. My throat is still hoarse. My ears are still a bit stopped up. But the fever’s gone and for the first time I felt like I might actually have some energy to get some things accomplished.
Certainly this illness did not bring me close to death, and I have felt worse in my days. But the forced vacation reminds me of the need for regular preparation for the resurrection to come. To suggest that God had me get sick to rest in him is both arrogant and self serving on my part and a theology that I sometimes question. But what I know is that God takes those dark moments and brings life in the midst of them.
I sit here now with hope — hope that healing will come, hope that this rest in God is preparing me for things to come, and the hope in grace, which ever present to us.
I’m feeling better.
I just might live after all.
Only Wonder Understands 
i got me a steroid shot from the docs. i only had symptoms, not a full blown flu, but it sure wasn’t fun.
speaking of schools. i never remember schools closing due to flu or sickness, yet it has happened every year i have been in nashville.
You know, I’m really glad that you wrote this. Not because you were sick – I’m glad that you feel better – but because you managed to talk about the Resurrection and how the illnesses and dark times in life are in preparation for the time to come.
It’s getting harder to find a thoughtful comment on the Resurrection and life after death. Either it’s caught up in discussion of the Rapture, or it’s treated as something that distracts us from the mission on Earth now. But then I found this post, and it helped me to think on the resurrection and how central it is to Christian faith, and what it means. Thank you for that
yep. that was insightful and refreshing. Thanks. I feel better already.