Malaise (definition): a generalized feeling of discomfort, illness, or lack of well-being.
As I type this, my daughter is lying on the couch: feverish, lethargic, sad. She is experiencing malaise. I have no idea what’s wrong. It isn’t strep. It isn’t a cold. And yet it also isn’t serious. It is, as my Dad would say, “the dreaded lurgi”. An unidentified malaise. She feels awful.
“Mommy, will you pray that I will feel better?” she croaks.
And so I do. And she will. Perhaps today, but perhaps only in a couple of days when this thing has run its course. Until then, I’ll stay by her side and give her sips of water and try to keep her comfortable and nourished. She will not always feel this way. But I’m with her while it’s yucky.
As I watch her it makes me think that I sometimes suffer from something similar: a spiritual malaise. As the old joke goes: A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks “why the long face?”
Sometimes, I have a long face. I feel like a wilted plant – something’s wrong. I feel awful. I just don’t know what it is. It is a dreaded lurgi of the soul.
And sometimes I pray, and ask others too: “please pray that I will feel better.”
And they do. And I will. Perhaps today, perhaps only in a couple of days when this has run its course. But until then, it does my soul good to know that my Heavenly Father is by my side, giving me little sips of what I need to get me through this. I will not always feel this way. But He’s with me while it’s yucky.
2 thoughts on “Malaise”
The dreaded lurgi sounds like what my aunt used to call “feeling punky.” Both are malaise, and both are bad enough to fall more toward the truly ill end of the spectrum than just being out of sorts.
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/punk%5Badjective%5D Third definition down the page)
And on a happy note, you’re going up on my blog tomorrow! Woo-hoo!
Hmm. I had never thought to look up the word lurgy/lurgi before, but had inferred its meaning from its use in our house. Turns out, a lurgi is a highly infectious, and highly fictitious disease – conjured up by people as an excuse not to do something.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lurgy
So apologies to my daughter and my readers: this is no lurgi. She’s feeling punky!
Excited about tomorrow.
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