When You’re Moving Slowly and Behind Schedule

Just about the time I think we will avoid illness this winter, an ugly virus sneaks in the back door and hopscotches its way from family member to family member. For ten days I do nothing productive while the kids are at school except read Divergent, a book my sons have been begging me to start for months. Unless you count watching reruns of Friends and Dharma & Greg as productive. In that case, I’ve been dang near prolific.

Late last week I decided to journey my Sicky McSickersons self away from my Lazyville spot on the couch. I still didn’t feel good, but I needed to knock out a little writing. So I heated up the tea kettle, grabbed my laptop, and sat down to write. But as I sat at the kitchen table waiting for the tea kettle to boil, I couldn’t help but notice our dog, Georgie, had tracked in a solid rug of dead grass. So I decided to just real quick sweep up the grass before Georgie spread it to the four corners of the house. When I returned the broom and dustpan to their spot near the laundry room, I noticed my daughter’s swimsuit laying on the floor by the washing machine. When I stooped down to pick up the swimsuit, the tea kettle started hollering. So I slam dunked the suit into the laundry and relieved the teapot from the burner. As I poured hot water over my tea bag, I remembered the letters I needed to mail. While the tea steeped, I walked outside to deposit the envelopes in the mailbox. After coming back inside and grabbing my steaming cup, I felt plumb tuckered and settled myself back into Lazyville.

Like a mouse with a cookie, it is doubly difficult for me to focus when I’m under the weather. Not impossible, just difficult. But what is difficult-er for me to handle? The threat of feeling behind. I know some say sick days are a good opportunity to value rest, and this is probably true. But for me, sick days still feel like wasted days. And I fear that waste.

But like handling any kind of fear – no matter how small – the best way to fight it is through faith, faith that I’ll get done what I’m supposed to get done. In the meantime, I take my familiar spot on the couch with Divergent. I call a very dear friend or sister just because I want to hear her voice. And when I run out of cough medicine, I run to the store and double up on the meds, both cough medicine for me as well as flowers for the house.

Then today arrives, and it’s all blue skies and 70. In March, y’all! If illness makes it harder for me to focus, then gorgeous weather makes it twice as easy. It’s like my brain gets a supernatural spring in its step, so I am buoyed foreword. I smile through my work, enjoying how God’s love of redemption even reaches to coughy/sneezy/sniffly sick days.

So if you find yourself behind today because of illness or something else, may you find a comfortable spot to enjoy some Dharma or Downton, whatever you fancy. And may you be able to remember that if you are being asked to slow down, He’ll help you make up the difference. He redeems time.

You just need to rest in faith – and that’s time always well spent.

Is it easy or difficult for you to rest when you’re sick?