A Forgotten Secret

Sorry I’ve been incommunicado this week.

The night before the movers came to dismantle my childhood home, I woke up at 3 a.m. with the flu.

Not a cold. Not a virus.

Influenza.

Bone-rattling, teeth chattering, flu.

Chills and fever with all the trimmings. Stabbing aches and pains. Dizziness. Malaise. Intense fatigue. A cough that feels like a sword is going into my chest and out my back.

When I walk up the stairs, my heart rate goes wild.

My eyeballs are even sore.

I’ve got to tell you that I’ve been questioning the Almighty about the timing of this thing.

It has given the move an even more surreal, nightmarish aura.

(i.e., Tell the movers where to put the chest/sneak back to the empty bedroom, lie down on the rug and shiver.)

There’s been no clean break. My poor mother is camping out in a half-empty house, alone with her memories. No TV.

Over the course of the week, I kept getting worse instead of better…. so yesterday we took a hiatus. Didn’t get out of bed all day. Drank gallons of water. Slept.

I thought that surely I’d be much better today.

Wrong.

Sometimes life is hard.

And painful.

I find myself peevishly grumbling: “Why did you allow me get sick again this week? Didn’t we pray and pray for a smooth move? This has been much harder than it had to be.”

I lie here trying to come up with a positive thought before my feet hit the ground.

Hmmmmm. Not coming up with much.

And it dawns on me.

Lately, I’ve been working on living a more grateful life.

I’m reading a new book on gratitude, and an old book on praise.

There is a secret I learned years and years ago, but continuously forget.

William Law, 18^th century theologian, expressed it well:

"If anyone can tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you, for it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing."

I’ve got my work cut out for me.

At least this public confession will hold me accountable.

Let you know how it goes.

(p.s. Happy Birthday, Middle Girl! xoxo, Mom)