Health-certainty

Do you know that feeling? You have a big event tomorrow that's been on the calendar for months. Or maybe you signed up to lead something three months ago. Or maybe it's a wedding shower you agreed to host for your best friend, or the kid you offered to watch for your tired neighbor. Or maybe you're supposed to take a trip that you saved up for over a year ago. Or maybe you finally have a date night.

Regardless of the commitment, you have a scratchy, itchy, nagging feeling in the back of your throat. You feel that unsubtle, worn down, fatigue that accompanies the looming feeling... You're coming down with something, or worse, you are in fact already sick!

There's a little panic or tense anxiety that occurs when you think you may be ill, and you have already committed to something. But really, is there ever a "good time" to feel bad? I want to feel healthy all the time like anyone, especially when I'm traveling somewhere new and exciting, but I realized something--if we view our commitments, not as obligations, but as investments, then our entire schedule and tension changes.

When we try to control commitments because we have signed allegiance to them, then the pressure exists to fulfill those obligatory vows. But an investment, or a covenant, can sit through peaks and valleys without causing us stress because they are purposefully long-term strategies. The valleys include sick days. That itchy throat or fever and chills becomes a state of purpose--a part of the process-- not something to eliminate. It improves the peaks and alters our definition of valley.

It wasn't convenient to have a broken arm when I first visited the Great Lakes. It wasn't ideal to have the flu when I first hiked through the Narrows in Zion. It also wasn't fun to have a child in his first wheelchair Halloween night, but the "panic" for health didn't overtake me.

We are often more teachable in weakness--when our bodies slow down, our hearts soften too.

Our mobile lifestyle has forced me to unclench my fists with regard to many things, but our health and schedule being the prime example. We don't always have clinics or doctors or medicine at our immediate disposal, but God has always provided what we needed. I also don't have to convince God to heal us because I don't have obligations. I have investments.

Letting go of "obligations" and trusting your long-term ventures generates peace. We don't have to accept the pressure of being our best because we pledged allegiance to something. We don't have to accept anxious frustration that accompanies controlling health-certainty. God will handle the details, we just have to be still and let Him be God. (Psalm 46:10)

~Carefully & Carelessly Health-wise