Can anything intelligent be said about a day one sleeps all but a few hours? I love my life. I don’t love it as much when I am sick though. Over the last few weeks of being sick, I have heard some pet phrases from my past come back into my head. “I hate my life.” being one of them. I used to especially struggle with this early in the morning. The last time I said this to myself, I just stopped, realized and told myself the truth. “No, you don’t. You love your life.”
I have been in contact with an old acquaintance from back in the day when I thought people who made decisions that considered other people were fools. (I was a bit selfish back in the day. I believe I have told you that story.) It is odd to realize how everything I have to say about my life now involves people. All my advice back then was to pursue self in everything and to avoid relationships (especially committed ones) at all costs. Now my life advice is something like this, “Find a group of people, a group of people passionately in love with Jesus. Root yourself down amongst them. Grow with them. Serve until you have a servant’s heart. Then serve because that is who you are. Make every decision in life considering those you are in relationship with. But above all, follow only Him because if you do not hate father, mother, brother, sister, spouse and even your own life, you are not worthy to be called His disciple.”
I will say this. I knew in February it was going to be important that I rested. I just did not realize that meant I would be sleeping entire days, trying to ward off getting pneumonia a fourth time. Sigh. According to the internet (which is, of course, always accurate), I still have a cold and do not have bronchitis. So I am sleeping a lot and drinking enough orange juice to make anyone’s stomach angry.
Now if I can make it through tomorrow to Wednesday when I can sleep half the day again, I might just be on the mend.
A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. They would say, ‘There’s the person who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’” – Luke 14:25-30
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