grateful for: the stillness that comes with sickness

I went to bed Sunday night exhausted but feeling pretty fine, but I woke Monday morning with a ragingly sore throat/head/neck/back/everything. So I spent Monday and Tuesday cancelling out of everything and sitting/lying on the couch. I tried to do work, but mostly I slept and watched Anne of Green Gables and drank tea and pomegranate 7-up (does anyone else have an aversion to water when they're sick?).

This is, of course, the worst time to get sick. It's finals season and holiday time, which means that not only do I have three major papers to research and write, last classes to attend, and a very busy writing center to staff, but also that I don't want to be doing any of these things because I want to be elaborately decorating snowflake sugar cookies, stitching ridiculous felt ornaments, cutting and gluing cards to send far away, and sipping spiced cider with a room full of friends reading poetry aloud or playing mildly nerdy board games. Plus chocolate cake.

But I was reminded of the blessing of this wicked virus yesterday evening, as I became aware of myself sprawled on the couch with a soft blanket, doing nothing. I could see snow on the windowsill across the alley, hear the radiators hissing, feel the couch's imprint on my cheek. Josh would be on his way home soon, and I'd have chatter and dinner to pull me back into activity, but for the moment, I was still, without a single task or distraction or scrap of text in front of me. And in that stillness, I remembered that it was advent, and I even thought to pray.