My husband and I ended 2019 with the flu.
In 15 years of marriage, we have never both been sick simultaneously. I do not recommend it.
It started on a Friday. We both felt ragged and run down but thought it was just the symptom of a long week with a holiday in the middle. Our schedules had been off. Our sleep had been off and we weren’t eating or exercising like we normally do. We thought that we just needed a good nights sleep- and a salad or two.
We woke up the next morning feeling worse. I left briefly to run an errand, but my husband spent the morning on the couch. We ate lunch and both of us went and took a nap. This behavior is very uncharacteristic of our family. On weekends, my husband likes to pack in as much activity as humanly possible. I still remember one Saturday early in our marriage, when he booked breakfast with friends, lunch with family, 4:00 chai with another set of friends, and dinner with a third group of friends. It made my head spin. This particular Saturday, we thought that a nap would recharge us, but we both woke up with a fever and body aches.
I made a series of phone calls and found an urgent care with a short wait time. We dropped the kids off at my parents house and set off to investigate our symptoms. The doctor didn’t even wait for our test results to come back- we had a known flu exposure and now had all of the same symptoms. The doctor prescribed us Tamiflu and ordered us to stay home until we were fever free without medication for 24 hours.
We stayed home on Sunday. We stayed home on Monday. I briefly went to work on Tuesday and came home and crashed. We were both already scheduled to be off for the rest of the week as part of our normal winter break. However, we usually take a road trip during this time, and we always look forward to it. We are all trapped in a car together, forced to love each other. It’s a lot of fun, but it became clear that this was not going to happen. We sat down and pulled our calendars up, trying to determine the next free weekend we would have to take this trip. As we started looking at dates, we realized that we wouldn’t have another free weekend until the end of February. It was only the first week of January and our weekends and week nights were filling up with activities.
We couldn’t deny what was happening to us. We were about to enter a busy season, and God was forcing us to rest.
In Exodus 33, Moses is preparing to make the journey to the promised land. I believe that a heavy weight was on his shoulders. How was he supposed to guide all of these people and get them safely to their destination? The logistics make my head spin. In verse 12, Moses tells God (my version)- you’re telling me to go, but you haven’t told me who is going to help me. God’s response is “I will personally go with you, Moses, and I will give you rest- everything will be fine for you. ” (Exodus 33:14, NLT)
Moses did not ask for rest. He asked for help, but God’s help comes with a promise of rest. We cannot constantly run at full speed and expect to be effective in what God has planned for us. We need to rest.
I want to encourage you- if you are in a period of stillness or if you actually have the flu- take the rest. Let God build you up to handle your next steps.
~Shiney
