A Reflection Starter from Saint Francis De Sales

"When you are sick, offer to Our Lord all your grief, pain and weakness, and beseech Him to join them to the torments He suffered for you. Obey your doctor, take your medicine, food and other remedies for the love of God, remembering the gall He drank out of love for you. Do not refuse sufferings to obey Him, yet desire to get well so as to be able to serve Him. If it should be God's will, prepare yourself for death, to praise Him and to be happy with Him forever. Remember that while bees are making honey they live and feed on bitter food. Likewise, we can never perform acts of greater sweetness and patience, or create the honey of excellent virtues, better than when we eat the bread of bitterness and live amid afflictions. Just as the best honey is gathered from the blossoms of thyme, a small, bitter, herb, so also virtue practiced in the bitterness of the most vile, low and abject humiliations is the most excellent of all." - Saint Francis De Sales, as given in Daily with De Sales - July (http://www.oblates.org/spirituality/daily_with_desales/july.php).