Over my life I have not been sick often. I am incredibly grateful for this health. When I do get sick, I consider myself a rather terrible patient, not the worst, but no where near decent.

Even the slightest cold makes me feel like the most apathetic person. I thrive on goal making and goal completion but when I feel even slightly sniffly, the only thing I feel like doing is turning on the TV and binge-watching Netflix. (My current binge show of choice is Jane the Virgin.)

I still usually muddle through y day; it galls me to have to call in sick even if I have paid sick days. It’s impossible to count the days exactly but I think I have taken less than 10 sick days in my working life.

This post concerns a potential sick day from a week ago. Last Monday I slept terribly. My throat began to feel sore earlier in the day so I knew a cold or at least cold symptoms would plague my next few days. I did not expect the disrupted sleep. I started to feel chilled even while I knew I was sweating under my top sheet.

Each time I woke up I contemplated the pros and cons of calling in sick. I kept hoping each time that I would feel better and when I didn’t I kept debating whether I should stay home. On one hand, I knew that rest would help me recover more quickly. On the other, we had MAP testing at school aka high stakes testing with all sorts of requirements that throw a wrench into obtaining a sub if any would actually take a job at my school.

In the end, I told myself that I felt just terribly enough that I could muddle through a day of testing and low-key tasks with my students.

That day felt like it stretched on interminably. I knew that I felt sick and gave up fighting it. All I wanted was to go home, curl into a ball and binge-watch Jane the Virgin.

I am not saying that all it takes is will-power to cure any illness. That’s ridiculous. I am saying, however, that apathy can be more infectious that the actual illness. I knew I felt sick and simply gave in to feeling miserable. I expected to feel awful so I wasn’t surprised when I felt awful.

It affected my mood, my interactions with my students including the particularly trying student that I had to keep in my room for four hours that day. It affected how much I was able to get done of the normal things that I needed to do to keep my head above water at school.

When I finally did get home after this terrible, no-good, awful day (literary reference alert.) I no longer felt most of the symptoms from earlier in the day, save the tail end of a headache on its way out thanks to pharmaceutical help. However, I persisted in my plan to veg out on the couch and binge-watch.

I didn’t need to. I no longer felt terrible. However, I felt entitled to veg out and do nothing when I was at home after suffering through the miserable symptoms at work. I had the start of woe-is-me syndrome.

After an hour or so of doing nothing I had to head downstairs to restart the modem so I could continue to indulge. While down there I decided to go ahead and prep all the stuff I needed for the morning. Something about getting up and moving snapped me out of my apathetic stupor.

I still didn’t feel 100% but my motivation returned. I no longer was interested in feeling sorry for myself. Instead I dove back into the daily tasks that needed to get done.

It was then that I started thinking about the subtle mood shift and analyzing how easily I slipped into apathy and entitlement. Not once did I ever pray and ask God for help with facing the day and all its challenges.

Instead, I adopted an internal habit of naval gazing. I looked inward and downward, took my eyes off God. My grandmother has this habit. Many times when something is happening that she doesn’t like or doesn’t understand or any other number of reasons, she looks down at her lap, shoulders slumped. Often I have wondered what she thinks about. Now I think I have a little taste and I don’t like it.

The next time illness knocks me down, I want to get back up by looking to the source of my strength. Sometimes that will mean taking a sick day and resting. Sometimes that will mean pushing through, relying on the strength that only God gives.