Blessings of Omission

What are Blessings of Omission, you may ask?

I’ll tell you; it’s when you are thankful for something that hasn't happened. For example, you might be sitting in church, peacefully minding your own business, when you see a member of the bishopric drawing dangerously close to your pew. You look the other way and then hold your breath… until they pass, at which point you hear them ask the person behind you to give a talk. At that point, you whisper:

“Thank you, God!”

That is a blessing of omission. Or, say, some July while you are uncomfortably sweltering in the humid heat of summer, you might be thankful that there were no recent terrorist attacks on the nation’s electric grid, because that means that your air conditioner is still functioning... and when you get back into the house, you'll use it.

Perhaps, even better stated as an example, let’s say you are ill, but you’re not dead… yet. You might be thankful that you feel only slightly dead, instead of mostly dead… or worse… entirely dead. THAT would be a classic blessing of omission, and that’s exactly where I found myself this last week.

I’ve written before about the snot bombs in nursery… well, last week, 48 hours from contact, I became ill, as usual… only instead of the usual routine, this last virus didn’t respond to my normal overdose of vitamin C and attempting to sleep into the later hours of the following morning. Instead, it only got worse, until I fully became the dreaded the snot bomb!

There was little else to do… I embraced it, I experienced it and I was then fully ready to let it go… only, it still wasn’t leaving. In fact, it had the nerve to get way worse instead of better, rapidly degenerating into full-fledged misery.

I tried to carry on as usual, but at every turn my body was reminding me that I was truly mortal. My head hurt, my joints ached, my sinuses burned and pounded, I had chills, I couldn’t breathe or sleep for more than about 5 seconds at a stretch. My eyes ached, my hair hurt and it felt like the very photons of light cruelly shining through the windows were bashing themselves against my skin, causing a constant background agony.

To top it all off, I was trying to stay on my diet. Hm… my diet. I’ve been on this diet for a little over 18 months now… that would be 551 days, to be exact. It’s been sound enough: 1400 calories/day and lots of exercise. The goal was to lose enough weight and improve my health to the point of not needing any prescription meds. A worthy goal, and I’ve had some success and lost about 40 lbs... but when you’re sick, depriving yourself of food isn’t always the greatest idea.

Therefore, 5 days into the illness and only getting worse, I decided that I was going to do the only “intelligent” thing left to do and increase my food intake. I needed to get well, and somewhere in the back of my mind this little voice was telling me that dieting while sick wasn’t okay.

My husband was about to head out to the store to buy some more medicine, so I asked if he would mind picking up something “yummy” while he was out. He wanted to know specifics.

“Do you mean food like peppermint ice cream?” he asks.

I nod and smile. “Yeah, peppermint ice cream sounds good… and maybe a burrito from Taco Bell,” I add as he is headed for the door.

He leaves with his list.

It was about then that the idea of actually being “justified” in going off my diet began to register. Wow, I NEEDED extra calories! How often can I say that?!

I call Kirk on his cell phone.

“Can you add some mashed potatoes and gravy to that list… and maybe some potato wedges… like, a LOT of them. A large order,” I specify, just to make sure there is no confusion. “I need this to be comfort food, because, clearly, I am feeling uncomfortable.”

I sat back down on the couch and began to think it through further. Comfort food. Wow. I was allowing myself to “partake” of comfort food! Truly, I could see the heavens open and hear the angels singing the Hallelujah chorus!

Honest!

A state of euphoria began to overtake me… I had just given myself valid permission to EAT… something delicious even!

I called Kirk again.

“How about some orange juice too? Can you add that to the list?”

He complies and is ready to hang up.

“Wait!” I cry out… thinking of what might be more comforting than ice cream and potatoes and orange juice?

“DONUT HOLES!” I nearly shout it out in happiness. “Can you bring home some donut holes too? I want those chocolate covered ones… ooh, ooh and those powdered sugar ones… and if they don’t sell them in the same box [which I totally knew they didn’t], then just buy two boxes of them, okay?”

I am here to officially tell you that waiting for that comfort food to get home took FOREVER! Dang! Where was he? Did he stop off to watch a football game somewhere along the way? I check the clock… 23 minutes have passed… It’s only a 40 mile round trip. Where was he? I begin rocking back and forth on the couch, whispering in a sort of hypnotic-like, semi-catatonic mantra:

“Ice cream, potatoes, orange juice, donut holes… Ice cream, potatoes, orange juice, donut holes… Ice cream, potatoes, orange juice, DONUT HOLES!!!”

I repeat this many times until, at last, I hear the chain rattle on the gate at the end of the driveway. Now, our driveway is quite long, but donut holes can do that to you… you know, make your hearing supersonic.

Eventually, Kirk walked into the house bearing the edible treasures and by now I’m giddy with excitement and can hardly wait. Already the food was making me feel better and I hadn’t even eaten it yet. It was a miracle!

*

Fast forward one hour later. After having sampled a “little bit” (purely a relative term) of each and every item, I sit back on the couch, sigh and smile, thinking about how I just might have donut holes for breakfast the next morning… and the morning after that.

I still couldn’t breathe, I still couldn’t sleep, and my body still hurt all over, but I was happy! Donut holes! Can it get any better than that? Because I was sick, I was eating donut holes. Oh, beautiful joy!

And so, in a weird way, I’m thankful today (that would be the 3^rd day of having donut holes for breakfast) that I’m neither dead nor necessarily healthy. I’m still coughing and my throat still hurts, there’s still all that gross green stuff and I still can’t sleep at night, but something beautiful has happened over the past 3 days. I feel alive again! I’m in love! It may only be love for donut holes, but those little morsels have given me a renewed purpose to life.

And that, I suppose, could be termed a blessing of omission.

*sigh* …donut holes… *sigh* .... I LOVE YOU!