I’ve been out for the last couple of weeks first due to Thanksgiving – then found out I had a staph infection in the skin! Not knowing I had this, I exposed myself to all sorts of winter bugs. I ended up in the ER last Monday with a really high fever – and when they confirmed that it was most likely due to the flu and not the staph – I have to say I had never been so happy to hear that I just had the flu!
Nevertheless, the return to the land of the active has been and continues to be a slow process and one I am learning not to rush.
As I was journaling this morning and putting the timing together…I concluded that I contracted the staph infection at just the right time actually. Between it and the hard hit flu, I had more then a gentle reminder that life is not all about rushing and pushing and breaking the break neck pace of the modern world…even if you are passionate and on fire about the “work” one would like to birth into the world.
Funny enough, there was a question I can remember hearing in my head over and over again in the days leading up to the fever…”Why are we all in such a rush – and rushing faster and faster every day? Will the world really stop if we don’t push ourselves faster for the next big technological advance to happen today instead of a few months from now? Or will it stop if we don’t open up the doors to shopping on Thanksgiving day instead of the day after?”
The week I contracted the Staph, I had many gentle reminders that I needed to slow down in my own life. That while my work was and is important, my own personal life is also of utmost importance. That while I could repeat the patterns of my younger years, pushing ahead academically and with my career while leaving my personal life behind…that She was asking me to NOT repeat this pattern again.
Thank Goddess I listened, for if I had been hit this hard with the flu AFTER slowing down…I cannot even imagine how hard it would have hit me if I had been going full speed ahead.
Over this last week, I have not been able to do much except sleep like a new born, text my friends for help, be open to RECEIVING that help in ALL forms! and to rest into the uncertainty that the only thing that is constant in life Herself is the constant changing within our bodies and without. That while I was really hoping this winter would not be plagued with viruses and the like that I have seen the past 2 years…well, I am learning to redefine even this thought…instead opening up myself to the expanding spiraling of life that includes everything – including illness – as part of life, part of the journey. To be welcomed, honored and asked what It would have me learn or show me. Instead of asking “why me?” I would ask “how?”
Instead of thinking that all my illness has been sent to “purge” my body clean, I am now looking at the illness as a way of helping my body to clear away those things in my life that no longer serve me in my current place in order to regenerate herself. By slowing down this last couple of weeks, I have had time to actually visualize my healing…and seen the spiral at work from deep within, within each cell…taking from the depths of Mother Earth Herself and spiraling that green healing energy up through my Root and into my core.
So what have I learned from this Staph Infection?
To slow down, to ask, to be present, to accept, to receive, to be open, to be honest with myself, to embrace and some how enjoy ALL of life – even those things we label “bad”, or “illness”….to take things slow.
For the world will certainly not stop turning even if it is not done today….
What have you learned from your own illnesses??
