the very hard workout that wasn't

I don't know who reads this blog, but if it's you, you may have gathered from my most recent post that I've been sick recently. It's the truth - from Thursday until Monday, I was beset by a weirdly morph-prone bug which manifested itself in its various stages as a pounding headache, a sweltering fever of nearly 103, aching limbs to beat the stars, drastically decreased lung capacity, a constant compulsion to cough (yielding no results), and a competition between my nose and eyes to see which could do the best impression of Niagara Falls.

Now, I will admit that, before I fell prey to these afflictions, I had been slowly but steadily coming to the opinion that I could really use a sick day or two. Not that I've been running my tail off to any unreasonable degree or anything, but you know how there's just always something more to do. Visions filled my head, of myself curled up in a blanket with a hot water bottle on my head, a mug of hot tea at my elbow, and a stack of good books to get through. Yeah, I could stand to be sick, just for a little while. Just for a break.

Well, I curled up in a blanket alright, but the only book I read was The Hobbit, and that was on the day between the mind-killing fever and the eye-crippling water slides. Visions filled my head again, this time of myself breathing freely while I walked nimbly up the stairs, without sitting down at the top to recover my strength, no tissue box in tow, speaking in a voice with only minimal resemblance to that of a goat. Yeah, I was done being sick.

Anyway, I felt well enough today to tackle a few of my standard Tuesday activities, so I taught a couple piano lessons, then went to clean at the local grain elevator offices. I might have moved a little slower than usual, but I was pleased to find that I could do it without anything approaching misery. Still, as I neared the end of the evening, I couldn't help but notice that I was feeling a little weird - and in an almost good way, which was weirder. With every breath, air rushed into my lungs, not without labor, but with an almost insane clarity and freshness. My arms, and especially my legs, burned strangely. Was I about to die or something?

Then it occurred to me - my body felt like it had just finished a good, rousing workout. (The infrequency with which this actually happens in my life may or may not have had something to do with the time it took for me to recognize the sensation.) A good, rousing workout - of walking and standing around for just under two hours, at a pace sufficiently stagnant to accommodate the concurrent dusting and mopping of several offices? That rushing, unchecked breathing, the thudding heartbeat, the burning muscles ... yeah, I definitely earned that.

How pathetic.

Like when I wrestle with myself sometimes - shall I do what I want to here, or should I go a bit out of my way to help someone out a little? It wouldn't be that much extra trouble, but it'd be extra, and it wouldn't make so much of a difference, anyway. I wrestle ... okay, fine, I'll do it. Feel pretty good about it, too, as I do. Yeah, I'm alright - I go out of my way to do little nice things for people that they might not ever even notice I did. Thankless, that's what it is, but do I mind? No, sirree. I do it anyway.

And then it slowly dawns on me that, um, Tierney? This was really the only decent thing to do, actually. If you'd decided to just walk on by without touching it, that would've been, like ... really lousy. Like, total jerk, why don't you just sit on the couch with your potato chips and forget the rest of the world even exists while you're at it? That kind of lousy.

And I look back, and I go ... oh. So you mean ... that feeling like I just conquered something really grand, just did something really above and beyond nice, just flexed some real spiritual muscle there - that was out of line? You mean that big ol' honker of a good deed was just ... my duty?

The old cleaning-house-disguised-as-an-aerobic-workout trick. Fifteenth time I've fallen for it since lunch.

I read somewhere (I really wish I could remember where) that if we find ourselves doing our duty, and feel a subsequent satisfaction with ourselves at having done well, the only thing this shows is how seldom we do our duty. How's that for a humility-inducer?

So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.'

(Luke 17:10)