Spiritual Lessons
There are spiritual lessons to be found in the experience of illness or injury. I have learned a lot from my emotions and reflections in coming to terms and coping with them: alcoholism, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, breaking bones in my hand splitting wood in Pennsylvania, a concussion via a lacrosse stick; and, saving the worst for last–Lyme disease and Bartonella–twice. Illness and pain has taken me by the scruff of my neck and forced me to pay attention to things in my life that I otherwise couldn’t be bothered to care about. Illness and injury have helped me to be more patient and less critical; slightly more understanding of my limitations, and by extention, those of others. Some of my rougher edges have been rasped down.
I am in Week #2 of a miserable cold. I can’t throw them off the way I did in a day or two when I was young, vibrant, careless. Now, with a body I can’t rely on completely, I feel my age, and all the scars, breaks, and all the places I’ve been banged-up along the way. There is a cold breath of mortality on the back of my neck, and I do fear the day when I can’t outrun colds and illness anymore.
