The crowd, the cough, and the couch

When it comes to following the crowd, I'm usually way behind. By the time I've done my over analyzing about what the crowd's doing, they have already moved on to something else. Scott is just the opposite. He's probably already thought about doing it or at least read something about it long before the crowd ever catches on.

Not so this time. This weekend we both joined the crowd. We got the nasty bug that everyone else seems to have. Together. At the same time. We went home Friday afternoon and craweled into bed. Saturday, we stayed in bed. Sunday, I moved to the couch. Monday was a little up and down. Mostly down. We tried everything in our medicine cabinet to find some relief. Advil, Sudafed, Dramamine, Robitussin, Immodium AD, and between the two of us we finished off two bottles of multi-symptom liquid ZiCam. Then I dragged my drugged self to the store to buy Mucinex. Today, I think we're on the back side of it.

I can't remember a single time when Scott and I have been sick with the same illness at the very same time. And as long as I have known Scott, other than his surgery, I don't think he's ever missed church on Sunday morning due to illness. Since we missed being there, we watched several other church services on television. Dozing in and out of my medicated consciousness, I caught bits and pieces of sermons by Charles, Ed, T.D., and old man named Ephraim, Joel, Joyce, and several others whose faces I did not recognize. I think the illness and the medication caused all the messages to jumble up in my head because the only words I can remember from them now are something about changing the way you think about yourself, something about fire dancing on their heads, and something about running the race. Actually, I think that last one was from the other religious broadcast that comes on Sunday afternoons, NASCAR.

Somewhere through it all, my perspective began to shift. I began to feel so small. There is nothing like sickness to make you feel small and helpless. Isn't it funny that a tiny little bacteria you can't even see can beat you up and make you think it's so much bigger than you. Lying there on the couch, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I drank the magic potion then felt like I was shrinking but nothing else around me was. The couch just kept getting bigger and bigger and I began to feel like I might not ever be able to get off of it.

That's the way Satan works. He tries to entice us into believing we're too small or powerless to fight whatever it is he's thrown at us.

Yes, I've felt physically powerless the last couple of days, but it's OK. I've put myself in God's powerful hands. No matter how big the couch looked or how heavy the pressure in my head was, God is bigger and heavier. God can do what ZiCam can't.

Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade." Mark 4:30-32