My daughter is sick.
My wife is sick.
I’m sick.
Seems like the whole neighborhood is sick.
It’s that time of year – the temperature is fluctuating; one day we have snow, another day rain, the next we have sunshine and warmth galore. The constant changes are good for bacteria and bugs, and not so good for the rest of us.
I don’t know what it is for you, but the constant battle for me during any bout of sickness is not really very much a battle of the body.
It’s a battle of the heart and mind.
The smallest sickness can be debilitating. How?
Well, I figure a lot of the problem is that the way we respond to sickness is to focus on it.
A little sniffle, if annoying enough, can become a big problem. Our mind convinces us that we’re miserable, and that belief is all it takes to ramp up the suffering-machine.
All of a sudden, it seems we’ve got a headache, and our whole body aches, and – what’s that weird lump on the back of my tongue!? I KNEW it was trouble, ever since I first noticed it when I was four years old!
Before you know it, the sickness has swept from our body into our mind and heart, and we’re a wretched mess.
Here’s the way I see it, and you decide if it works for you:
Yes, I’m sick. And it’s not nice. No denying that.
But I can’t let it make me miserable. Misery is a tide that will pull you under every time.
If I let the sickness make me miserable, then I can rest assured that it will grow and grow and grow, until it’s not really just a sickness of the body; no, it will have infected my heart and my mind. That’s an even worse condition, and one that will take me even longer to recover from.
So it’s not time to beat myself up and focus on my suffering. It’s time to smile, to think of what I can do instead of what I can’t. It’s time to get out of bed, get dressed, move around, and be active. It’s time to see what I can do to help others (without infecting them). It’s time to see what I can do to get healthy again.
So, I give all of you who are sick a little bit of encouragement – make an effort to be cheerful.
Do your best to be active, to make jokes, to laugh, even if the only one you’re laughing with is yourself (quarantine can be that way).
It might come out as a croak, but it will do more for your wellness than medicine alone.
