Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired!!

This has been a bad year for being sick.  I guess it has been a bad decade for being sick!  My goal for this year is to de-stress.  A lot of my stress can't be helped, but some of it can with a little help.  My kids will have to pick up the slack and cooperate a little, so getting them to cooperate my be a little stressful in itself!  Yike!

I have been sick for over a week now.  The congestion is in my ears and makes it hard for me to hear.  Also, bad headache and dizziness.  I will be so thankful to get back to good health. 

It never ceases to amaze me how intertwined the emotional, physcial and spiritual are.  When I am physically ill it takes a toll on my emotions.  When I am emotional it affects my spirit.  When I am emotionally hurting I have a hard time seeing clearly spiritually. 

I think if I have learned anything the hard way over the years is that no matter what, God is good.  Even though my circumstances scream to me emotionally that God has dealt me a bad deal, and even though physcially I am sick or hurt and it appears that God is nowhere to be found....the TRUTH is that God is here and is loving me perfectly through my sickness or my emotional pain or my rotten circumstance. 

Some days get so hard.  Some moments it seems like I just am not going to make it through the darkness.  But for me, hanging onto the truth that God isn't causing my darkness.  That God is suffering with me and walking through it with me. 

I think I lived a lot of my life thinking it was going to be relatively free of hardship or at least extreme hardship.  But that is not reality.  Life is full of pain and struggles and problems.  And when I realized that, I didn't struggle against the struggle so much.  How we do life with God is the bottom line.  Everyone's life takes a different turn.  Some of us have more pain than others, some have more on our plates than others.  Some of us are more alone (humanly speaking) than others.  But we all have the choice to see God as the ultimate goodness that He is in spite of our pain, sufferings or loneliness. 

And in reality, life is at the same time full of joy and love and goodness.  I think I wanted only the good and dreaded the bad that it took more energy just trying to not have the bad happen.  So now when the sickness comes, or the rebellious child upsets the house I don't dig my feet in and shake my fist to the heavens.  Instead I thank God for being ever present in my time of need.  For loving me as I am and through all my days.  Good and bad.  It is like a big sigh.  Not having to avoid pain takes some of the sting out of it! 

Now, I am not saying that I look forward to the struggles.  Some of lifes problems that have come my way have taken the wind out of my sails.  But not sunk my boat.  So now when I am in prolonged problems I know that that is the way life is.  My life anyway.  But that all the hymns and sayings that I have heard over the years are true.  But until I experienced it in my own soul they were just pat answers.  Now when I sing the words "the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His Glory and Grace."  Knowing "He makes all things beautiful in His time" and that He works all things together for good.  All these truths are what get us through.  Thinking on the good not the bad.  Knowing that "this too shall pass". 

Also, seeing things as a spiritual battle.  A fight not against flesh and blood, but against the evil one, the principalities of darkness.  Seeing the good in everyone.  Seeing their worth.  And approaching problems realizing they are a result of evil one way or another.  All this makes dealing with life's struggles purposeful, not just a pain.

Well, just some thoughts from my sick bed!  Tomorrow is a new day.