The sick dog

My daughter has been sick. Sick with the kind of illness that requires a mother to say things like "do not breath on anyone, touch anything, or even make eye contact with your brother and sister". I pulled out the Lysol, the bleach, and the gloves, and did my best impression of a quarantine. Of course I failed miserably as within an hour Thomas was walking around drinking from his sister's cup. I tried control, it didn't work for me. It really never has.

But sometimes sickness can be the gift. We dread it of course, even pray against it, but sometimes only in our weakness do we still ourselves long enough to acknowledge our weakness...and then subsequently acknowledge His strength. I'm speaking as someone who has no authority to say such things with any pretense of expertise, as from a physical perspective I am healthy and well, having never walked the path of a true and painful illness. However, I walked briefly along side of a friend once that carried a 6 month old baby girl in her arms, and also a terminal and aggressive tumor in her brain. During one of our visits she stated quite plainly, "I am grateful for the cancer because it has drawn me closer to Jesus". She considered the cancer, a gift. While I with little strength and faith was crying, falling apart, and mourning her before she was gone; she was still and grateful. Even today, I am not sure that I believe such a true and wise heart to be possible. I sing songs about trading my sickness for the joy of the Lord, and deep down I feel it ringing true for me only metaphorically. Can it be that God reveals himself to the weak, the sick, and the humble, in a far greater way than to those of us that walk with false perspective of our wellness? Could it be that we are the ones missing out on His glory? Could it be that they are the chosen ones to see His mighty strength, and that if we could taste it even for a moment, that we too would say things like "I am grateful for the cancer"?

After I gave up attempting to control the sickness in my home, I allowed my Ella out her bedroom and into the playroom. In the midst of her subdued play, she sat on the floor and constructed a model home for her stuffed animals. Though she wasn't attempting comedy, I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably on the inside at what she had created. Oh the poor "sick dog" outside the gate. We all pity that soul that has been moved outside, the one that has been forced to live outside the "right" of what life should look like, the sick one. But perhaps there are a few "sick dogs" outside the gate that would not choose to be locked back up inside the pin for anything in the world. They have tasted the stillness and the strength and the glory of the field outside, and they are the ones looking back in...pitying us. Have you ever dared to consider that?

Linking up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky to unwrap this gift...