The last time I remember being IMMOBILIZED by fever was a good eight years ago. I still got sick after that (naturally!) but I still felt well enough to walk around. I was with my high school classmates attending a science fair held in a high school located in a town outside the city. By lunchtime, I was feeling rather whoozy. I told my Sue and Doi I was going to hail the first jeep home but my EnSci teacher didn't think I'd survive the 40-minute ride, judging from the way I looked. He looked for a cab which brought me home. One look at the insides of my mouth revealed the cause of the fever - German measles at the ripe old age of 16.
My more recent date with a temporarily debilitating fever was Monday last week. With the thermometer hitting 38 degrees, I was coughing incessantly as if I swallowed a handful of thorny barbs and my nose dripped endlessly like a wet sponge receiving a steady supply of water. I still managed to crawl into my morning classes with my thick jacket zipped up to my neck. By lunchtime, my head was throbbing as if a marching band lived inside my head and decided to have a concert. I could barely walk so after a visit to the infirmary, I went home, put on my worn out yellow flannel pajamas with the numerous nameless sheep, buried myself in three layers of blankets and drifted off in what would be my best and longest sleep since school started. The fever wore off after a couple of days but the cough still punctuates the stillness of my study nights and my stuffy nose still somewhat makes the "n's" and "d's" difficult to distinguish. That means no cold drinks and sweets until I'm back to normal...oh the agony!
To be really honest about it, though, I welcomed getting sick to some degree. I did not really have much of a summer break to relax and when I started school, there were still knots in my muscles which had yet to come undone. Add that with a much uglier schedule this semester compared to last year (which sees me in class until late Saturday afternoons) and I sometimes forget breathing as a mechanism has a voluntary aspect. I juggle all that with training with a church singing group and attending and sometimes leading a small group along with being a daughter, granddaughter and an older sister...the list just seems endless. A couple of mornings before I got sick, I woke up feeling not just tired but deep-down exhausted, the kind that seeped past my bones into my soul. That brought to mind a documentary I saw a couple of months ago in Discovery Channel about a group of people who pull boats upstream in China's great Yangtze River for a living. There was so much tension evident in the images - from the ropes bound to the boats to the taut muscles of those who did the pulling. That's what I told Macor when she came to visit me, while chewing off yummy choco pie (Ooops! Didn't I just say 'no sweets?').
As I lay on my bed swathed in blankets and the sheep shivering in my flannel pajamas, I swirled a bottle of messages from Mayla, a gift from Mayla on my birthday a couple of weeks ago, popped the stopper and picked one. The small slip of silver paper contained two lines from Matthew 20:28 - "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many." I immediately pulled out my copy of "My Utmost for His Highest" and turned to a reflection I had read sometime ago. Oswald Chambers wrote "The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people's souls until they learn to feed on God. We owe it to ourselves to be the best for His lambs and sheep, as well as for Him (February 9)."
The thing was that I had not been getting my fill of God for the past couple of weeks. It was like drinking half the contents of a glass of water and sweating off a liter. I was runnning around headless and it was just a matter of time before I would crash into a wall - and I did. Sheila texted me, saying that I really needed my rest this time and there was no arguing with her, especially since she's older than me and I sometimes call her Mama. There was something more than just satisfying when you're working for Someone Else's glory and not your own in any aspect of your life and I get to know more about that Someone and His true nature as I get mud on my fingernails and sweat on my brow.
But then, nothing beats the stillness.
I slept in my Father's arms that night, shivering flannel sheep and all.
