A Button to Justify

So, if you know me from Twitter at all, you know that I've been whining since Sunday about being sick. I'm not sure if it's bona fide H1N1 or just the seasonal flu (I am pretty sure it's flu, though, since it's come with fever and achy, don't-touch-my-skin-it-might-rip feelings), but it's got me laid up.

I have received lots of wonderful tweets from my good friends who have encouraged me to take care of myself and stay home; the world will not end if I'm not at church for two days. What's more, do I really want to be making other people sick?

And yet why is it so hard for me to give myself this grace? Why do I need the justification of my Twitter friends, who could end up (though they haven't) debating amongst themselves whether or not I'm too sick to go to work? If you have any thoughts on what my problem is, or how I can fix it in myself, I'd love to hear it. I seriously don't always get what goes on in my little brain. If it were anyone else, I'd say, with wide, generous breadth about the true seriousness of the symptoms: "If you don't feel well, STAY HOME!" Yet I simply cannot do the same thing, unequivocally, for myself.

It took my mom saying, without any hemming or hawing, that I should stay home. Then I could listen. My MOM told me. So here I am. And then I found the nifty CDC button, which will have an honorary spot on my sidebar till all this flu stuff blows over, to help remind me, and all of us, that we should take care of ourselves (and protect others from our germs) when we're not well, and that it shouldn't be this hard to do it.