I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, sitting at my dining room table, tapping away at the keys of my laptop. It’s a warm sunny day, and the day is filled with grace.

I am weeks behind on work, completely unprepared for the trip I am taking tomorrow, and my taxes are going to be late. And none of it matters.

It’s the first day I will not be spending in bed, after a week of bronchitis and unrelenting fever. I am well aware that I look like the walking dead, but the simple act of being able to take a breath without pain feels miraculous. I have to carefully manage my energy in my weakened state, but my body has taken its power back from the invading bugs.

The week before I had been in Whistler, BC, surrounded by awe-inspiring snowy peaks, bearing witness to levels of suffering that left me feeling emotionally scarred. Holding space for a group of individuals being pushed well beyond their comfort zones, while undergoing my own process of expansion and retraction, took everything out of me. It was hardly a surprise as my plane touched down at Newark airport, that I began to feel feverish and achy. I knew there would be repercussions to the events I had experienced.

I over-estimated my resilience, and was brought down. Hard. I was as sick as I ever remember being, and no one and nothing could help. Not that I asked for it.

My week of hard emotional work, and my week in bed, totaled two weeks of me sitting in a bottomless pit of ‘poor me’. I was consumed with how impossibly difficult it was to do the work I was called to do, to manage the relationships in my life, to even control my own body. I felt broken, defeated, hollow. The possibility of spending the rest of my days as a bed-bound sickling became a viable option.

Then the most terrible/wonderful thing happened. My daughter had an accident that could have landed her in the hospital (or worse) and emerged with only a few bumps and bruises. My inability to hold up my own body after my feverish week vanished as I moved hundreds of pounds of furniture and electronics off her body. With the fear of the moment still coursing through our bodies, we joked that she ‘scared the sick out of me’. It is unexplainable to me how we both ended up the way we did – frightened and sore, but altogether ok.

I often think of grace as the sheen of a sunny day, but I know now that her hand is best seen when darkness fills the space. The light from a single candle can be seen from miles away on a dark night, but disappears within a few feet when the sun is shining.

Apparently, I lose the ability to see when life is too bright, and have to be constantly reminded that the light of grace is always shining. So she gives me darkness, which I would never choose, in the form of my body’s betrayal, a hard slam into my own perceived limitations or the incomprehensible ‘could haves’ of life’s big and little accidents. Sometimes, it’s the soft ache of a heart that cannot find it’s way through to the next safe place.

My daughter’s guardian angels took care of her that day, when the world collapsed on her tiny body. My own angels helped my exhausted body, and disbelieving heart, to find their way back to health again. As ridiculous as it seems now, I know there will come a time when I doubt their grace will surround me. All I can do is trust that something will force me to open my eyes against the darkness and see, once again, that undeniable sparkle.

When was the last time you saw that small shimmer of grace? How dark did it have to get? Tell me below.

Like this article? Get your own personal slice of my brain delivered straight to your inbox by signing up here. Make sure to tell your friends, too. The more, the merrier.