I did everything right and I still got sick! Has that ever happened to you? Well, that’s where I ended up.

My wife came down with a flu of all flu’s. I’ve never seen her down for so long before. It hit her quick and it hit her hard.

Lily was in bed for two days, and dragged herself around the house for over a week. She even said that maybe next year she would get the flu shot … that on it’s own tells me just how sick she was!

This was not something I was going to catch if I could help it. So I did something I haven’t done often in our 30 years of marriage: I slept in the spare room.

There was just no way that I was going to breathe in what she was breathing out. I would get infected as I slept, completely unaware of what was happening to me.

It kind of reminds me of two guys back in college who decided they were going to prank their neighbours next to them in our dorm.

Their room was just on the other side of the wall and there happened to be a hole in that wall … on one side anyway. The guys made a small hole in their room at the same place.

During the night as the neighbours slept in bliss, the guys blew baby powder into their room. The neighbours next door never knew what hit them.

In the morning they woke up to their room covered in what looked like fresh fallen snow. The white powder was everywhere, on the beds, in their hair. … I think there was retaliation the next night.

The thing was the powder was silent. It came over them when they slept; they never noticed it at all.

And there was no chance I was having my immune system hijacked by Lily turning towards me and breathing flu germs in my face all night.

She realized this flu was not something that should be passed on and volunteered to sleep in the spare room for another four nights.

That’s five nights we slept in separate rooms while being in the same house. That has never happened before!

We did all the right things. I stayed away even when she desperately wanted a hug, just some human contact … well, I sort of hugged her at arms length. I was also washing my hands like a surgeon – I hope surgeons wash their hands as much as I did.

In the end, she slowly came back to the land of the living, yet still low on energy. She seemed to have recovered enough for me to let her back in our bed.

And then it happened. I was drinking lots of water – tons of it – getting plenty of sleep, exercising and taking care of myself. But I woke up one morning with a scratchy throat.

I didn’t end up as sick as she had been, but for all my purposeful, proactive prevention, the sickness didn’t escape me. I’ll be okay.

Here’s the thing: Sin has this kind of ability to sneak up on us. We can do all the right things, stay clear of triggers, give a wide birth to temptation. But when we are not looking, when we least expect it, sin can creep in when we thought we were in the clear. We can never let our guard down.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has snuck up on you, even when you took precautions? Leave your comment below.