Evidently, I’m not the only one sick in our house. The flu has been passed around and now Samuel (1.5yrs) has pneumonia! Arg, pray for our family to recover from all of this!

And on a lighter note, here’s what would make Samuel stop fussing over the weeekend. Works like magic and should do the trick for anyone’s Monday!

I’ve been down with the flu for the past few days and this isn’t any ordinary flu I’ve ever had. I have been leveled and bed ridden (I’m mean, my hair even hurts - how does your hair hurt!?!). It’s always interesting what it takes for God to get our attention. Now, I’m not saying that the Lord gave me the flu, but it took something like this to slow me down.

How often do we go at such a non-stop pace that we begin to forget about Him. Have I run out and sold my life into sin? No, but it’s certainly a sin to be “doing good” for Him and to lose Him in the process.

So here I am, achy and hating life, but I’m also spending some long overdue time with my Maker.

Oh my gosh. Could something so small and colorful wreak so much havoc on one’s body? This stinking cold virus that’s floating around is amazingly awful. I know a bunch of High Schoolers out with it. I’ve got it and so do the rest of my brood.

Curse you! You little bag of skittles or whatever you are!

Yes, after agonizing days of vomiting and spewing out my rectum, I’ve finally almost returned to my health. Physical health that is. Mental health is another story.

It’s amazing the amount of thinking you can get into lying around in bed with a 103 temperature, shivering underneath six blankets. God often brings us to those points kicking a screaming, but they are good none the less. Did I feel like I had the time to sit and be quite with the Lord? I’d say no. Now, I don’t mean daily quite times - actual times when you let the world run away from you - when you planner goes to hell and all you can do is sit. I know I had no plans for this, no plans to lay around in bed for a few days in silence.

I mean there’s this inherent period of detox. For the first while, you just have to fight with your mind to stop moving. Our lives are always moving 90 to nothing, so why should we expect our minds to slow down when we say so?

So my mind runs wild with its own ambition - some good, mostly bad. I struggle to bring it back around, but inevitably it breaks free again. After a while of that and my body just getting hammered with fever, I reach this point when the mechanism gets cleared.

Focus happens. Life is tuned out. That good tunnel vision of the mind happens and I get to really connect with God. I speak with Him and He talks back to me. We have this really amazing conversation. He kicks my butt, but he also tells me how much He loves me and how much He has in store for me. He answers some of my “big” questions, but like most conversations with Him - he leaves me with many more questions than before.

I wish I were so disciplined as to periodically take myself out of life, to connect with my maker. But I’m not. I wish I had the guts to put my life on hold to spend time with the one who loves me and knows me most. But I don’t.

I love the fact that He is willing reach out and bring me into this quite place – to clear my plate off and bring me into His presence. And even if it requires some hurling and diarrhea to get me there, I’m game.