sicker than a dog...

Our family is sicker than all get out. Heidi and I went down harder than we've ever concurrently gone down before. I could hardly care for her, she could barely care for me. Yesterday, we just coughed and hacked and sneezed and moaned together. Last night, Taylor, woke up with a cough that sounded like a wounded animal in the Amazon. It woke me out of a deep sleep and sent my heart racing at a rate that I haven't experienced in a quite some time. She then woke up crying (next to our bed at this point in the night) and said that she had wet her pants, only to find out she was sweating so much that it confused her as to whether she urinated or perspired...that took a second for Heidi to clear up the confusion...we're glad it was the latter.

I'm on a medication right now that is boosting my heart rate...I'm jiddering and achy...my head feels like it's going to explode, my throat is raw from coughing up chunks of infected flem and throat fragments, my nose is draining like an infected war wound, my eye balls feel like leaking water ballons, my nerve endings are so sensitive I can feel the difference between my skin and the muscles it gently covers, my joints are arthritic, sore and slow moving...all and all, I'm a wreck. And Heidi, if you can believe this, is much worse. She is fixing to get a sterioid shot or something this morning...I hope it gives her a much needed remedic boost.

This has been going on for weeks now...in and out, up and down...first me, then Heidi, then a couple of the girls, then back to Heidi and then over to me and then all of us...it's crazy. I was thinking about writing a book about the Apocalypic End of the World as we know it, but this morning it struck me as a slight over-reaction to the common flu. Although, when you're sitting in the fat middle of this sickness, you want someone to just put you out of your misery and death doesn't seem as far away as it typically does. "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain." I wonder if Paul had the flu when he wrote this morbid verse. It makes all too much sense to me today.

It's amazing how hard it is to imagine that everyone is not feeling as bad as I am right now. There's something about being human that makes it so natural to project your current state of emotions on the world around you, when in actuality, many of you reading this right now are even having a hard time feeling sorry for me you're doing so well. Why, you're fighting to conjure up even a shread of compassion! That's so crazy for me to make room for that sort of logic...but I'm trying to do so.

But this is one thing that I'm getting better at lately...realizing that everyone else doesn't have to go on a diet the day I do for the reasons I do. Recognizing that just because I'm struggling with lust on a given day doesn't mean the world of men are pining for porn. I'm getting better at not reading my life into others and vice versa. This is especially important as a pastor. You can easily have trasference issues which starts to eat away at your congregation...they get the sense that you're trying to make them feel exactly they same about what is currently a big deal to you. They are forever trying to keep up with your mood swings which vacillate from one issue to the next. You are forever starting out message or conversations with the phrase, "This is one of the most profound things I've ever experienced" or "I've never encountered something this important" ect. Everything is urgent, Everything is critical. And what was critical last week get's trumped by what is urgent this week. The upmanship of urgency starts to feel like the "crying wolfe" syndrome and before long...humans start to develop an immunity to it all. I don't want to be like that.

So even on this day when I wish you could all enter into the desperation of my sickness with me, I am forcing myself to agree with the truth that it's my cross to bear this week and I'll not try to make is yours as well. In all honestly, I hope you feel healthy and optimistic this Monday morning in the month of February. I hope God at work and at play in your life like never before. I hope you're feeling more energy than you've felt in months.

But if you're not, and you need a place to to identify with someone else in the slough of despond...jump in and lets wade around in the quagmire of negativity together.

I need to go and blow my nose.

Comments

David Cortner said…
Sorry to hear about how sick you are...but look on the bright side...your blog is making a great sermon illustration for me for this coming Sunday morning!

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