last week my lovely wife came home with scratchy throat and a sinus headache. it later turned into some full-blown nastiness of a mid-summer cold. sadly for her, it fell right across her birthday, of which she spent pretty much the entirely in her bed.
the sickness then attacked me … starting late saturday night with a brutal attack on my sleep and throat (a brilliant combination for the night before you have to speak to a congregation).
i’ve rested, taken the right cold medicine, and deluged my body with vitamins, and i have a sense that this sickness is leaving.
i think we pretty much live without an awareness of how much our lives affect those who are around us. the human condition is so helplessly self-centered that we rarely stop to think about how the decisions we make are going to affect others.
my wife would never do anything to hurt me; i am confident in that. however, it was the germs she carried home with her that led to my sickness.
most of the junk we carry, we picked up from someone else. its like they’re germs infected us, and we walked away with the same sickness. for some of us it was our families. for some it was our friends. all of us have been infected.
i guess sharing germs is one of the prices of proximity. if you live in close proximity to someone, you’re going to share germs. as much as my wife would hate to think that she gave me an illness, i would hate to be away from her that much more just to avoid it.
i guess this mid-summer sickness is just a consequence of something a lot bigger than the germs, something beautiful and broken all at the same time.