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Mud puddle illness

"Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything." Count Rugen

 Truly, if you don't have your health it's hard to appreciate the rest. An axiom of life most have experienced to some degree.

 Of course, many crushing waves can pummel us in the sea of life, taking their toll; rocking, upturning and threatening to sink us. But we cope, clinging more dearly to what remains afloat of ours lives. 



Yet being robbed of health is more like a flood than a wave, a simultaneous inundation over our whole playing field. Whether it be from the pain, the delirium, or simply profound exhaustion, we no longer have the physical, nor often mental, ability to enjoy anything else of life. We simply breathe and hope. Of course, we're talking disabling illness here, the kind that sweeps you up and lays you very low. Not just for a few days or weeks, but months, years, longer...

From my own experience of lengthy and at times debilitating illness, I've had a few things reaffirmed.

Firstly, you never know when incapacitating illness might claim you. I was sitting at my computer, tired but otherwise fine, when an internal plug was pulled. A sudden sinking feeling in my chest and the abundant energy, which I so took for granted, drained away in less time than it takes to draw a breath. I collapsed. In my case, twelve weeks later I'm able to attempt a return to work. For many, that crossroad in their lives is one they will never return to. For them, illness will permanently claim them, diminishing incrementally or rapidly the pleasures and opportunities of this life, unto death.

Which hammers home the thought, Am I where I want to be when that happens? 

If illness should take you tomorrow, will it leave you regretting your choices up to that point; especially in regard your deepest held convictions, relationships & heart-goals. 

However, severe illness can also be a God-send. Sound contradictory to my first point? How can illness be a blessing?... When it opens our eyes to those convictions, relationships and heart-goals that we know are precious, but have been long neglecting. Too often those weighty matters of faith, hope and love -which we internally acknowledge so vital- get waylaid by the vices of ease, lust and instant gratification. Our relationship with God, spouse, children and friends, withers, while we satisfy the baser diversions in life; only to our loss.

Better a good ending than a good beginning, I say. Let the outset be as harsh and marred with challenges and upsets as can be. As long as at the end I find my hearts desire and die content. How sad to wallow happily in the shallow mud puddles of life's beginning only to find yourself staring, at life's end, across the ocean that was meant to be swum. Now, too late, the joys and beauty on the far shore squandered for the drying mud between your toes. 

What are your mud puddles? Will it take illness to dry them up and remind you of what life's really all about? If that's what it takes, I wish you ill-health.
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