A Christmas Food Poisoning Story

I trust everyone out there had a lovely 25th?  I did too!  From the 23rd thru the evening of the 25th, everything was great.  Lots of fun, lots of family, very little drama (first time in years!).

And then it hit.  Sometime in the wee hours of the night, I started dreaming that I was puking.  Multiple, varied dreams.  I specifically recall one where I was hugging a nice clean toilet. By the time I cracked my eyes open on Monday morning, it was evident that the source of my dreams was very real.

Since then, this has been the view from my bed:

(just so we're clear, the bed protector wasn't for me.  Even though I know you don't believe me.)

I've had lots of time to ponder how this illness befell me.  Five family members have been struck at exactly the same time.  A sixth just got hit last night.  It could be food poisoning, but plenty of people around us on the 23rd had also been sick.  So it could be flu.  Either way, the symptoms are the same, and the misery as intense.

But I have another theory.  This one involves GOD.

Now this theory was hatched while in the lowest part of my illness, so it might be somewhat delusional. Let me know what you think.

I'm not an especially religious person, I don't go to church, and I haven't read the bible in years.  But I believe in God, and I do my nightly thanks to Him and talk to my boys about him regularly.  So I'm not completely remiss.  BUT, this year, I completely forgot 'the reason for the season,' if you know what I mean.  It wasn't until Christmas afternoon, on the way to visit family, that it occurred to me.  It took hearing mention of it in a Christmas song to remember.  Umm, yikes.  I felt a little guilty as I turned to my kids and said, "You guys, I totally forgot about why we celebrate Christmas!  Did you?"

They all shook their heads and said they remembered.  And my husband nods in agreement, giving a story about how much our 5 year old has been talking about it lately.

I remembered this, as I was lying in bed moaning and feeling like I was dying from the stomach out.  A short while later, this crept into my consciousness:  on the way to a Christmas Eve party Saturday night, my mom and I got distracted (as usual), and I completely missed the turn-in to the street where the party was.  I took the next turn available, which just happened to be a church parking lot, filled with people going to Christmas Eve mass.  At the time, we all thought it was terribly funny, and we joked about those darn religious people making my drive through their parking lot more difficult.

Maybe He was mad at me for the whole "forgetting Baby Jesus" thing.

Now that I'm past my lowest point and am on the other side of the mountain, I'm feeling more positive about things.  Maybe I was a little delusional, induced by the pain and nausea.

But I remembered one last thing this morning:  for Christmas I wanted to lose about 5 pounds to fit back into my pants (I've been eating a lot lately).  I'm now more than halfway there.

Hmmm...is there a higher meaning to all this?