No Rush: Lessons from the Flu and Life’s Darker Moments

On waiting, perspective, and the kindness that carries us

Today makes eight days of me being sick. Someone already did the math and realized, yes, I was down for Christmas.

My plans for hosting our family for the holiday were canceled due to this untimely arrival of the flu. It spread through our entire family and this Mama is the last one to rise from the ashes of this terrible bout of shared illness.

Sidenote: The bounce back these kids have is wild! They were only down 1-2 days then back like nothing ever happened! I don’t understand. They don’t even eat their vegetables good!

The first several days were absolutely miserable but about 3 days ago, I at least was able to start concentrating on things again, even though I couldn’t physically do much, I at least could watch a show or movie with the family. Yesterday, I even took some time to read.

Yesterday I told myself, “today is going to be the last day I let myself rest.”

Today I woke up and realized my mind doesn’t always know what my body will need.

Yesterday’s assured declaration, “Tomorrow I will rise!” became a prayer of lament today, “Father! Please, I’m ready to get up!”

But the truth is, no matter how bad I want it, my body isn’t physically stable yet.

It is improving, but I’m not quite back yet.

Whenever I get into a situation where I feel like, “man this sucks” or “this is the worse,” I do my best to step outside of myself and either think about a story in scripture or a situation in real life that actually is worse.

Because often, a change in perspective is really all we need.

Looking Outside Myself

While doom scrolling last night, I ran across a video of a University of North Carolina basketball player who was in a car accident with friends. This car accident resulted in a spinal injury for this once, college athlete. His video showed his former glory and athleticism, juxtaposed his current reality— wheelchair bound, extreme muscle atrophy, too weak to lift with two hands what he could once left with a single finger.

This is tragic.

I watched the video at least three times trying to imagine the pain, disappointment, shock, frustration, sadness and all the other emotions he has probably felt since his life changed so drastically in an instance.

In the mix of these emotions, I’m sure there’s also gratitude and guilt because everyone didn’t survive the crash.

What a weight to carry at such a young, promising age.

I think about another story, one much closer to home for us. Our yard guy’s sister, a high school cheerleader suffered an injury that has recently left her paralyzed. Perfectly healthy to paralyzed in high school!

There are other stories that are coming to mind as well like Mickey, the Big Brother TV Show star who had the flu recently then passed away due to heart complications that happened after.

That is tragic.

Now right about now, one would expect me to move to the Bible to share a story, which I considered cause I did read about a miracle in Luke yesterday where a man was sick for 18 years and Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. And I could break that story down and feel this post with hope that Jesus still does miracles, but I don’t want to spiritually bypass to some hope-filled conclusion after sharing those really, sad stories.

They don’t fill like hope is on the horizon at all…

Two young people’s lives will never be the same and two others are gone. Their families are left here mourning the futures they will never see for their children.

Now I’m not asking or expecting you to mourn for these strangers, but I do think we can take away two things from this:

1. Empathy

2. Expectancy

Empathy:

I used to feel bad for not feeling bad when I heard tragic stories. I would say, “man, that’s sad", then continue moving about my day. We have experienced so much collective trauma that we often numb ourselves with simple things like mindless tv shows, social media scrolling, dumb YouTube videos….we are tired of grieving.

So we numb ourselves to survive. We don’t dwell in the darkness too long, because truth be told, we’re actually already in it but these screens bring in jussst enough light to make us forget the surrounding darkness we’re in.

The truth is, we aren’t supposed to know this much. I’m not supposed to know about the student in North Carolina. I live in Texas and we have no mutual friends or associates! But technology has made everyone our neighbor and when we try to process the tragedies of the world, we quickly find that we can’t.

We turn numb.

Then we think something is wrong with us for not caring.

The issue is, we weren’t built to know and carry this much.

I think we’re most healthy if we focus on being aware and meeting the needs of those in our personal sphere of life. Then after that, if we have more capacity, we can extend compassion further.

But to keep up with the tragedies of this world and to then carry a sense of responsibility to care, cry, mourn, do something nearly every time…there’s no humanly possible way.

Show up for your people.

That’s the point.

Over the course of these weeks we’ve been down with the flu, we’ve had multiple people drop off homemade meals, drinks, Kleenex, groceries…our needs have been met in the most beautiful ways because the people in our life showed up.

We didn’t live too far that it was a great inconvenience for them to drop something by, we are in community together.

Showing up and meeting needs is one of the best ways to respond with empathy.

It’s Personal.

Tangible.

Actionable.

And it’s towards someone you know and can get to.

Expectancy:

At this point in life, we should have an expectancy that at some point, something is going to go down that we don’t prefer or enjoy.

When that thing comes, we should expect to need help.

And since we can expect to need help, we should go ahead and prepare for those moments by having the best time building the best friendships possible.

The time to build community is not in the middle of a storm or after tragedy hits. The time to build community is when the sun is shining, when the birthday parties are happening, when your favorite football team is playing…we have to do a better job of sharing the good times with each other.

Joy is meant to be shared and it even doubles when it’s shared!

Invite people to your kid’s sports games, have people over to watch a movie or a game, kick it while it’s daylight cause eventually the night will come and you aren’t going to have it in you to cultivate friendships in the dark.

I know I’m just coming out of the flu, but I’ve been in darker times and our people showed up because we invested more in the daylight then we needed to withdraw in the dark.

That is the only way we get through the hills and valleys of this life, we have to do it together.

Conclusion:

This was a long and slightly heavy brain dump, but I needed to get it out. I’m not even going back to edit Lol

If you read it, thank you— I hope it was helpful in some way to you.

Clearly I just needed to process but anyway, I’m going to leave a video of a song that’s really been helping me while I wait. It’s by my favorite band, Red Hands and the song is called, “No Rush.”

I love every version of the song, but here’s one they did in collaboration with Faith City Music.

Be encouraged and find your people!

Let’s Discuss:

• Where in your life are you trying to rush what still needs time?

• What does your body know right now that your mind keeps arguing with?

• Are you investing in community while life feels light?