Thank You, God, for Sick Kids

My two boys have been sick this week with the stomach flu.  This nasty bug is making the circuit fast, so maybe you have been dealing with some of the same things I have.  In the middle of switching out puke buckets it can be hard to remember to still praise God, so I made myself try to brainstorm some blessings I have experienced out of this.  Here are a few that I have come up with: 

• Sickness causes everything to slow down; “normal life” and commitments have to be put on hold, bringing everything into sudden perspective.
• More cuddle time, something that I notice decreasing as my boys get older.
• A chance to practice the self-sacrificing type of love that God calls us to.
• One of my bathroom floors is now cleaner than it was before (a miss).
• Commiserating with friends via text messaging brings comfort (joint suffering does wonders for a friendship!).
• I pray more when my children are sick.
• My children feel their own weakness and their need for a strong God to help them through.
• Peyton has great color changing abilities –from pale to grey to green and back again.
• Sometimes I wish I could have another baby, this week I am reminded how much I appreciate sleeping all night and kids who can hold their own puke buckets.
• Speaking of buckets, this provides another good reason to keep eating ice cream this summer.
• God is in control, always. I am so thankful for that.

God is amazing, there is ALWAYS grace to be found in every situation. After meditating on these blessings I found myself happy my kids had been sick…what an odd statement…but not untrue. God desires us to look to him in all circumstances and to praise him for managing our daily divine assignments. Yes, divine and ordered by God no matter how mundane (or messy) they seem.

This experience brings two verses to mind. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” from 1 John 3:1(NIV) and “For from his [Jesus’] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” John 1:16.  When you are adopted as a child of God his love is lavished upon you and his grace stacked high.  All from the abundance found in Jesus!  This is not an occasional sprinkling like from a little squirt gun but like a continual flowing from a wide open fire hydrant.  Live joyously in this current, knowing that all things coming at you flow first through the loving hands of God himself. 

My boys only had the flu and not cancer or a debilitating illness.  Yet, this is where thanksgiving in all circumstances starts (1 Thessalonians 5:18), in the small, ordinary occurrences of life.  When larger and more difficult moments come, you are practiced in trusting God and are able to worship him in the midst of it.  If it doesn’t happen in daily life, it won’t happen when life’s true trials come. 

Ladies, what has God brought you to today...this week...this year?  Stop to find his grace in the middle of it. Where do you see good coming from it, how about spiritual growth or a training up of your soul?  Still finding that hard? Then look at Jesus and think on the love he had for you that drove him to the cross and how he broke death so that our eternity can be forever sweet and glorious with him.  Everything pales when staring into the face of Jesus Christ.
​
Let’s praise him today no matter what you are going through.  Find his love lavished and his grace stacked high at all times for those who love him.