As it turns out....

I have been sick for the last week and was checked into the hospital by my Doctor last Tuesday morning. I thought I had the flu... As it turns out I had a kidney infection and was experiencing the systemic effects of high fevers, chills, body aches, etc. After a day and a night in the hospital I begged for release to go home. In the hospital I was given heavy doses of antibiotics intravenously and at home I am continuing taking an oral antibiotic. Although I am still recovering I am feeling much better.

Being ill sometimes has the positive effect of causing me to reflect on what has been important in life. I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters & Papers From Prison and although the circumstances may be quite different I identify with the heart felt sentiments in this passage written to his parents:

"It's remarkable how we think at such times about the people that we should not like to live without, and almost or entirely forget about ourselves. It is only then that we feel how closely our lives are bound up with other people's, and in fact how the centre of our own lives is outside ourselves, and how little we are separate entities" (p.105).