Welcome to Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude is always my only focus of my writing, which for today is for something I can’t believe I’m actually going to say, and that’s for having contracted COVID.
As I sit here and write this, it’s the 9th of January, 2021, and I’m now seven days deep into having this virus rampage my entire health system. At first, I was pretty angry with God that I had contracted COVID. Beyond the Fibromyalgia and other physical pain issues I’ve had endure for over ten years now, getting sick hasn’t been a problem for me. In fact, I’ve been physically ill with the flu only twice for two days or so and can’t even remember having caught a cold once. Which is why when COVID came around, I didn’t take it as serious as I truly needed to.
Initially, I wrote blog articles about how I was going to continue on with my life, doing my best to help others, and not worry about this virus or the masks. I was very cocky in my words and should have caught sight of that when I lost a number of friends on Facebook during the spring time frame when I published those articles. I also acted very egoistical about this virus when I expressed disdain over my therapist’s decision to go virtual and then to put a piece of plexiglass between her clients and her when she returned. And to think of the number of conversations I had with her where I expressed more anger for what COVID took away from my life rather than compassion for those who’ve suffered from it, I’m most certainly ashamed. Maybe even more so because I was also one of those who said quite often that COVID is just a bad case of the flu and if I get it, I get it. I’m eating those words now.
Yet I’m grateful I have this virus.
Why?
Because it’s very much humbled me. And I needed to be humbled when it came to this global pandemic. I needed to feel the helplessness and hopelessness that comes during the thick of having this virus. I needed to feel just how much this isn’t a flu at all. It’s something much more, and much worse and nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my entire life when it comes to getting sick.
I have great compassion now for those who’ve suffered from COVID where before I didn’t, understanding now over how serious this virus actually is where before there was only an air of ignorance, and overall an apologetic heart to everyone I discounted in the last ten months during their conversations with me about this illness. I was wrong, way wrong and I dedicate today’s Grateful Heart Monday for having gotten such a huge ego check and humbling moment in my life, one I’m still going through each day as I continue struggling to breathe, shaking from this never-ending fever, and throbbing from this head pain and pressure that is beyond description.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
