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REFLECTIONS ON HEALTH: (ON RECOVERY FROM BEING A STATISTIC)
by Peter Cook
They say I became a statistic the other week. I had the West Nile virus. I don't know if it was an early morning mosquito from the golf course, or one from finally finishing fix the Rectory fence after last year's hurricane. Since working in my youth for the Gallop Poll I have never been that impressed by statistics. But I have a few thoughts as to how I felt that week. Please don't think I'm trying to be morbid, though heaven knows I am quite capable of it.
In May I turned 64. The day of my birthday I was visiting my oldest friend in the U.S. and he sang for me on his guitar the Paul McCartney song, "When I'm 64." You know: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, etc." All very nostalgic, very humorous. Then suddenly the fragility of life rises up and hits you. You are in hospital where you exist on that knife-edge line between headache and nausea. Needing to keep liquids and food down but wondering if you have the energy or inclination to bother.
As we get older I can understand how many of us get to the point where we just don't want to have to go through certain health things again. Allow such thoughts to linger and our zest for life would soon evaporate. The other year my wife's mother had some life threatening health issues. And she's only 86! She finally resolved the dread of going though all that health stuff again with the simple realization that she needed to just live each day as a God's gift. God gives us the gift of one healthy day at a time.
Funny really. As Christians that is something we should know already! Thank him for giving us the gift of health each new day. How come God keeps having to hit me in dramatic ways to remind me of that??
---The Rev Dr. Peter J.A. Cook, M.A., is Rector of St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, in Lake Charles, in the Diocese of Western Louisiana.
