Spending Time

In the United States each year we spend approximately

• six months sitting at traffic lights
• eight months opening junk mail
• one year searching through desk clutter
• two years trying to call people who are not in
• three years in meetings
• five years waiting in lines

In a single day, an average American will

• commute forty-five minutes
• be interrupted seventy-three times (unless you are a parent then that number triples)
• receive six hundred advertising messages
• watch four hours of television

(Taken from the Good and Beautiful God – by James Bryan Smith)

In a single day with chronic illness you might

• take over 30 remedies, supplements or medications
• go to two or more therapies
• take a detox bath or ionizing foot bath
• research symptoms for hours on the internet
• read chat rooms or FB posts from others struggling like you are
• check your vitals
• take a nap
• juice something

Don’t think for minute that I intend to count up all the hours I spent in therapies or take one of those overwhelming photos of how many supplements and remedies the kids and I have taken. That is too much information and I don’t intend to look back anymore, just forward.

How do you intend to spend your time? How do you intend to “file” this healing time? How do you feel about spending time in suffering? When this is over, will it be worth it? The fighting, fretting, insomnia, worrying, penny pinching, resting – what will you gain by this?

Really, people, it can’t be for nothing.

How do you spend your time?

I have had a few interesting phone conversations with chronically ill Lyme patients lately. One has all this time to heal and is having trouble settling into the abundance of time and loneliness. The other one isn’t entirely convinced she has the time, not only to heal, but to even get any sicker.

Healing takes time. You don’t NOT have the time.

If you are functionally sick, it is a matter of WHEN not IF, you will get worse. You will degrade and get sicker if you do nothing. Why?

Because every day of our lives after we are adults, our bodies are moving toward a final end. After a certain point in our lives, our bodies are losing everywhere – its called aging. If the body is fading how can it maintain health with no effort in a half-sick body?

It is impossible. Sickness is inevitable if you work too hard, if you don’t eat right, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t rest.

Rest is imperative. You must not squander time. You must accept time is necessary to heal. You must get off the rat race of our country that is in a hurry for something every single day. Get off the ride and rest and make some decisions.

It will take time to heal. It will take sacrifice to heal. It will take change to heal. You can’t fit in true categorical healing from chronic illness between the 5am workout and the PTA meeting.

There is a phrase used often in the small town I grew up in – half – a$$. But because I can’t use that exact phrase in front of my kids, we developed a new one. There is a book by Francis Chan called Halfway Herbert. It is a fabulous example of a kid who wants to do everything half way. You can’t halfway tell the truth, you can’t halfway get to heaven.

You cannot halfway heal. Spend your time healing by learning your character, by loving those around you and finding new ways to enjoy resting and relaxing.

Don’t be a Halfway Herbert.

Blessings and healing,

Janice Fairbairn – the Lyme Evangelist

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