As I’m writing this, I’m SUPER sick. It’s really obnoxious. I hate being sick. Last week I helped with a summer youth camp for some local churches, and the going nonstop for 5 days and averaging 3.5 hours of sleep has caught up to me. (Even though those kids were lots of fun)
First it was a lost voice. (I was squeaking more than a squirrel on helium) Then a pounding headache from sinus pressure. And now it has completed the chaos by giving me a fever and insane body aches.
Part of me is shouting “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!?!” While the scientist part of me says that your body is used to a certain homeostasis – it is used to a certain normal, and I completely disrupted that this week. I caused it to exert WAY more energy than my usual desk job life requires and now it has to recuperate and get all of that energy back. Even though I had a lot of fun, our bodies are systems and those systems have requirements just like any power grid or machine. Those machines require fuel and are made for a specific job.
Imagine I had a personal lawn mower and I only gave it a few drops of gas then expected it to clear a brush thickened yard that hadn't been mowed in over a year… It wouldn’t work. The mower needs more fuel than that AND it was built to mow an inch or two off a single family’s lawn, that’s its purpose.
I have built and trained my body to function best in a very simple environment with LOTS of fuel. I normally sleep at least 8 hours a night and eat a fairly healthy diet. This allows me to go through my typical work day and get a workout in and be perfectly fine. My body doesn’t just randomly shut down and get very sick. When I choose to use it for things it wasn’t made/trained for, it makes sense that it would then freak out.
The same thing happens when we go against God’s plan. We as humans were made in God’s image, meaning we were made to love. We were made to make the world a better place. When we do things that we weren’t made for, when we try to do things without the fuel of the “living water” that is God, things go wrong. Our lives fall apart.
So where are you pushing the boundaries? What are you doing that is not what you were made for? How could you refuel with the love of God more often? His love is never-ending. It is the ultimate cure. But we must go close to him and listen to him when he tells us what we can and can’t do. He knows our limits far more than we do. Just as we all should listen to him when he speaks to us of His plan, maybe I should’ve listened to my body when it told me it couldn’t take any more. Now it’s time for me to go take a desperately needed nap. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz....
