Why are we all getting sick?

the monthly letter

My friend (who’s a cancer researcher and scientist) has thoughts. My doctor has opinions. The magazine headline facing out at the grocery checkout apparently has the answers.

Except maybe the right answers are less important than entertaining the question with curiosity here.

If you’ve been in bed balancing a thermometer under your tongue for any part of this recent season, the question stings. Your mind roils with all that you missed:

her first ballet class, or

the homecoming game, or

the meeting for which you spent three weeks preparing, or

the vacation you’d blocked on the calendar for eight months, or

maybe just the third morning workout in a row or the third week of Bible study, absent.

We’re becoming a people of missed appointments and missed commitments, racing the clock because we woke up behind. Googling our symptoms and self-doctoring so as to avoid another missed moment. Always missing something. Surely, there’s an antibiotic for all this missing.

Less the answer, perhaps we need to be open to entertaining the question: Why are we all getting sick?

We drove our family across the country several summers ago for our annual beach trip. Three days of prep plus two days of driving also gifted me a week in bed on the third floor of our beach house without even an ocean view. My kids and Nate dragged sand toys down to the beach and carried sand back up in the bottoms of their bathing suits for a week while I nursed my “always missing something” thoughts and my sick body.

This wasn’t the first or the last time I missed out. My body became a magnet to any kind of sickness I encountered. Your two-year-old came and played blocks at my kitchen table with a runny nose, leaving me with a cold for a week. Over and over again, I missed out.

After many blood draws, consultations, and doctor questionnaires, I received a diagnosis. But that answer more than anything else signaled the beginning of my asking this question that I propose to you today.

You see, we aim to be limitless people in our 21st-century lives.

If I set it right, my phone can alert me to an impending storm and a new message for all the Junior parents about homecoming pictures — in the same minute while I’m tying Charlotte’s shoes to go out the door.

I can research Lyme disease, see when it’s high tide in Charleston, South Carolina, and purchase tickets for a December showing of The Nutcracker, all within six minutes … while I’m blending my smoothie for lunch.

If I time it correctly, I can drop off a home-cooked meal to a sick friend, pick up takeout for my family (because I don’t have time to cook for them), and shuffle the kids out the van door so they make it to the field one minute before soccer practice starts.

I change the laundry at 10:23 before bed, check my email one last time—quickly sign up to bring a fruit salad for the small group breakfast—and slide under the covers, only to be awakened three hours later, in the middle of the night, reminded that I never dropped off the dry cleaning in time for Saturday’s dance.

Two to three days in bed sick every four to six weeks for a year gave me a lot of time to consider: Was I meant to live at this pace?

It’s the same and next question I am asking you.

Were we meant to live in three places at once — Target, accessed through my phone; Tuscany, a glimpse into my childhood neighbor’s vacation; and the Ukranian war with real-time updates?

If the answer is no, the implications are vast (inside of me):

my child misses the birthday party of their friend (because I cannot cram it into our Saturday), and it’s me who struggles with FOMO for them,

I don’t sign up to bring a meal, and I have to face the fear of losing connection in a friendship because I’m not useful,

I skip the family reunion and risk the terrible (but rare — because I don’t allow for it with all my participation) feeling of being on the outside,

I put my phone away for hours and miss out on the banter of the group text thread,

I’m not in the running for the new position because I can’t put in the extra hours and also tuck my kids in bed at night,

I stay home alone on a Friday night and face that looming anxiety of being alone in the world.

We might as well call it house arrest.

It’s how we feel when we put down our phones, and say no to more activity, and pace ourselves according to what our bodies can actually be and do rather than what we want to eke out of them.

Your body and mine are saying “uncle.”

(And we resent that.)

But will we listen?

Whether the cause of our frequent sickness is toxins in our environment, or ticks in our woods, or poor genetics, or improper hand-washing, we can still ask the question of ourselves:

Did God make me to live at this pace?

As 21st-century believers, we must ask ourselves: Did God intend for me to live at this pace?

Two thousand years ago, the maker of your soul … wearied.

“Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well” (John 4:6).

He knew this humanity and, in human skin: He took naps at the helm of a boat during a storm and slipped away from the crowds that needed Him. He talked to God in private while His people languished.

The meal you don’t bring to a friend, the wild opportunity your child was given that you pass up because your family can’t shoulder the commitment, the texts you ignore until tomorrow … might be an invitation to explore the slowly growing fears underneath your skin that get quiet when your life is loud, but still have power over you.

Maybe it’s time to let those fears speak.

Because those fears are craving the gentle attention of God.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

God used my body to tell me a story (again), and this house arrest that came with my Lyme disease has given me time and space (again) to feel the discomfort of being:

less productive,

less accomplished,

less needed,

less impactful,

less [you fill in the blank] …

… and instead, to feel the growing comfort of knowing (really beginning to know) that I am a beloved child of God.

After the ache of realizing I cannot keep pace with the life I’ve made for myself, there is a sweet relief in considering that God didn’t intend for me to be three people in one. Phew.

The other side of the question “was I meant to live at this pace?” is perhaps the deep soul respite you’ve been craving.

{These thoughts are spilling out of me as I watch the world around me keep pace and also get sicker, but they aren’t new. I wrote much more about this in The Gift of Limitations, which I just released this spring.}

Until next month,

Sara