Sick Days: Overcoming Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder

A couple years ago, despite getting a flu shot, I came down with what seemed to be going around in the influenza category. Oh, not the head cold, sinus infection, runny nose, sneezing and coughing category; nor the digestive track, vomiting and running to the bathroom category; but the achy, weary (is-this-a-vitamin-or-iron-deficiency?) category.

Starting Friday night, I took to bed and slept and slept and slept (14 hours that night, then another 12 hours the next day!). I dragged myself downstairs, weakly impelled my concerned husband to fetch tea, DayQuil and NyQuil tablets, the morning newspaper, and the heating pad.

However, I was definitely not at the I-think-I-may-die stage; it was more the “how-tired-and-muscle-sore-can-a-body-get?” stage. Somewhere soon after self-diagnosis and the conclusions (“I’m not going to get the Christmas stuff packed away in the attic this weekend; I’m not going to make it to church; I’m not going to make it into the office today”), I thought, Oh, how lovely! I can spend wakeful time just telling God how much I love Him—not enough of that in my life. AND—I can read! YEAH! Truthfully, sometimes sick days are the best thing that can happen to us.

So, this is what I did do:

1. I really had the time to love God and thank Him for scheduling this unplanned break, which of course was not on my calendar.

2. I sat in the sun, which in February in winter in Chicago is not all that frequent an opportunity—particular since our Mainstay offices are on the interior of our building, with no outside views.

3. I read three books by Imre Kertész, the Hungarian Jewish author and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature. I had bought these books in May 2011 while in Budapest: Fatelessness, Kaddish for an Unborn Child and Detective Story.

4. I finished reading The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan.

5. I listened to the first three discs of His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, which David received as a white-elephant Christmas gift.

6. I sat in the sun in my south-facing home study and reviewed the notes in my past writing study.

7. I started reading John Polkinghorn’s Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship. Underlined pertinent observations.

8. I canceled a joint birthday outing with my sister but exchanged emails and photos of our grandchildren.

9. I reread some well-loved poetry Mysticism for Beginners by Polish writer Adam Zagajewski. I loved the poem “A Flame,” since we have been dialoguing about the aging process (observing ourselves as we age)…

God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride—before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.

10. I texted my teen grandsons (I learned to text so I can keep up with them).

11. I slept with the heating pad, remembering that I love solitary days without schedules, whole days set aside for thinking and listening. Slept some more.

12. I pulled out my Gregorian-chant CDs and filled the house with this ancient worship music.

13. I looked out the windows at the melting snow, watched the sunset at the end of the days and felt the night creep on. Looked some more.

I cannot tell you how centered I felt, how close and at home I came to the core of my being, how replete with God, how satisfied with the world and my life, how reminded that I love to write but that much of writing is this thinking process, this listening to one’s self and the God who whispers in the silence through the beauty of words and ideas and stillness. And that I have not had enough time to listen deeply, that I have gotten out of the habit. I had been suffering from Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder. I ended my sick days replete, full, satisfied, spiritually renewed and mentally massaged.

Thank God for sick days. I think I should schedule a few in each month.

This piece, written several years ago, is a perfect reminder to me of how rare and precious the gifts of isolation and social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic days are.

I may never, in my lifetime (now at age 77), have the opportunity to finish up all the neglected projects that are stored in piles and files and awaiting my attention. I’m going to try to use the Soulish Food newsletter to let you know what God is doing in my life and to hear what He is doing in your life during these rare moments of isolation—a national fast—to say the least, from busyness and the frantic expenditures of frenetic energy.

Karen Mains

Reminder!

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Karen Mains

BOOK CORNER

The Deepest Well:
Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.

Time and opportunity provided by the coronavirus shelter-in-place restrictions have given me the incentive to plow down through my “file and pile” box. I’m hoping to finish a book on the listening process tentatively titled Tell Me: I Hear You and I Want to Understand.

Since this project includes reporting and understanding the neurological benefits of being heard and understood, Dr. Robert Vieth, a good friend and a neurosurgeon, has been advising me on my research. One of the books on his recommended-reading list is The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.

When I mentioned this to my daughter-in-law, Angela Mains, she said, “Oh, yes: ACE (adverse childhood experiences). That’s been around for a long time.”

Well, admittedly, I knew something about the clinical work on childhood traumas, but not in light of this terminology. Needless to say, reading The Deepest Well has been a fascinating journey. And whereas my own childhood was nearly idyllic, I’ve applied many of the considerations in this account to understanding how to better help those I know who have suffered ACE.

I’d be interested in your comments if you read or have read this.

Endorsements from the back-cover copy:

“A heart-breaking, world-shaking, revolutionary book. In The Deepest Well, Nadine Burke Harris uncovers the once-hidden story of why we are the way we are. And she offers a new set of tools, based in science, that can help each of us heal ourselves, our children, and our world.” —Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed

“The Deepest Well is a heartbreaking, beautiful book about what might be the most important single issue facing our country's disadvantaged populations: the prevalence of childhood trauma. Relying on her work as a compassionate physician and first-class scientist, Burke Harris weaves together groundbreaking research with touching personal stories.  The result is a gripping book that should convince everyone that we have a serious problem, and that unless we address it the losers will be our nation's children.”—JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy