Sick
I hate being sick. I start to feel all lazy and isolated and snuffly. I get scared that I'm going to miss singing gigs and disappoint people, and my sinuses are full. Perhaps worst of all, I have to try very hard not to talk, because talking is very hard on a voice that is already fragile from illness. I dearly love to talk. I love to connect with people and tell them my stories and hear theirs, and let them know that they are understood. So when I'm sick, I stay at home and try not to sneeze on anyone, and I am silent.
I've been reading/studying/filling in the questions in this amazingly challenging book; "The Artists Way," by Julia Cameron. The headline at the top of the cover reads, "A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self." Basically, she encourages the reader to name the creative endeavors that are fulfilling, and then figure out why we are not pursuing them. The chapters are insightful, and full of incredibly relevant quotes, then a series of revealing exercises. Today's exercise was the following: "Pick a color and write a quick few sentences describing yourself in the first person." I dove in, and this is the result:
"I am turquoise. I am changing seas and swinging moods. I am the vibrant meeting of golden yellow happiness, green verdant growth, and blue clarity. I can lean towards grey when the sky is dark, but even then I am beautiful, subdued and ethereal."
That was challenging to write. Somehow I've grown up to believe that a person's worth is in what they can accomplish, how much work they do, how many people they help, and maybe how good they look while doing all of this. When I am sick I am supremely unproductive, but could the truth be that I am still beautiful even in the silvery-blue hours of physical and emotional languor?
Zephaniah 3: 12, 13 in the Message: "I'll leave a core of people among you who are poor in spirit--What's left of Israel that's really Israel. They'll make their home in God...Content with who they are and where they are, un-anxious, they'll live at peace." Could it be that when God rides in on a white horse to rescue people from where ever they have gotten stuck, he wants them to rest? God seems to want his people to know exactly who they are in Him. He wants to rescue me from slavery to my desire to be perfect and please others perfectly and leave me at peace, knowing who I am, and content to be that person.
Lord, I want to be well and strong and generous, and I know you will restore those things to me... but help me in the mean time to be content with knowing that even when I am resting in clouds of weariness and illness, I am still your daughter, I am still a person of worth because I was created by you, and saved by you. I do love being yours,
laura
