Blogging While Thankless

My friend and inspiration Julia wrote about thankfulness over at her blog, Lotsa Laundry, the other day. She wrote this:

And so I am struck by this irony: for all the times I've cried, I need a break! I still do not appreciate the respites when they happen. I take 'normal' days as entitlements rather than as answers to prayer. 

I have that problem when it comes to illness.  I was finally able to get out for a run the other day -- first time in eight weeks, after Lyme disease followed by a cold that turned into bronchitis.

Lyme disease has, of course, nothing to do with chronic illness; that I caught it was just a fluke, or a cosmic joke, or an accident, or something.  And after two weeks of antibiotics, I was starting to feel well enough for exercise again.  And two weeks of down time isn't fatal to an exercise plan, even if it's an exercise plan with a half marathon at the end,

Where I got bogged down was with the cold, that left me short of breath on its own, but then turned into bronchitis, which left me really wiped out. 

And that run left me with a big dose of bitterness.  Shouldn't I be thankful that I'm able to run at all, to cover a distance of 2.5 miles, albeit with lots of walk breaks? Shouldn't I be thankful that I'm not worse off?

Instead, I'm angry.  Angry that after gaining fitness for the first half of the summer, I'm back to where I was in the spring, coming off all the winter illnesses.  Angry that I won't be able to do that half marathon -- not this year, and maybe never.

And afraid of what the winter will bring, yet again.  Somehow, I had hoped that being well conditioned would help stave off the winter illnesses.  Not only did that not succeed -- I came down with a "winter illness" in August.

I'll conclude with Julia's closing question: "Is that normal?"  Yes, I suppose it is.  But I wish I could muster something different.