As my head spun, I took my temperature carefully under the tongue with an instant-read meat thermometer.

No fever. But I was chilled and exhausted and had a horrible cough and an outrageously runny nose.

It appeared that the flu had barreled right into our Christmas Octave.

I lay on my bed, which felt like a raft bobbing on open water, relieved to discover that I was actually sick and not just lazy.

Earlier in the morning, I wasn’t sure why the thought of making lunch had seemed like a gargantuan task that made me want to cry.

I pulled up the covers and realized I had a long day of doing nothing ahead of me.

What was I going to do with all this free time? I needed something to keep my mind occupied and give me a boost, too.

Relief and distraction beckoned in the form of YouTube.

An endless stream of hair styling tutorials and obscure history lessons whizzed by.

Day turned to night, and my screen time ballooned. I was passing the time, sure, but was I feeling any better? Not really.

As I closed my bleary eyes, I couldn’t help but feel that the day had been a bit of a waste.  

I thought of young St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was bedridden after returning from war.

As he convalesced, he read the only books available, the Gospels and the lives of the saints, titles he wouldn’t have cracked open otherwise.

Man, am I glad YouTube wasn’t around then. St. Ignatius absolutely would have spent all his time watching videos on how to perfect his sword swing.

Or, maybe he, too, would have been interested in the latest battle-ready hairstyles.

Luckily for us who came after him, the only diversion he could find was spiritual reading, which became the catalyst for the profound conversion of one of the most influential saints ever to have lived.

After the flu had passed — and after my oldest, who’s studying to be a nurse, purchased a real forehead thermometer for me — I finally had the capacity to pick up a good book myself, Vinny Flynn’s 7 Secrets of Divine Mercy.

Flynn, who had helped edit the official English edition of the diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy in My Soul, recalled in his book a moving conversation recorded in the diary between St. Faustina and the Lord.

One day after St. Faustina had received Holy Communion, she told Jesus how much she had thought of Him the night before.

He responded, “And I thought of you before I called you into being . . . Before I made the world, I loved you with the love your heart is experiencing today and, throughout the centuries, My love will never change.”

Flynn points out that each of us is one of millions of potential people who could have been born from two parents based on possible genetic combinations. One in millions!

Parents can’t choose who their children will be, but God can and does.

God thought of and chose each and every one of us before the foundation of the world and loves us individually in a unique, one-of-a-kind way.

Each one of us is truly “God’s favorite kid,” as Flynn wrote.

Just like the Eucharist, God’s love doesn’t dilute as it multiplies.

Remembering that God is my Father and loves me as His favorite child — and you too! — was the instant boost I was looking for that YouTube had failed to deliver.

Now I know that before the next round of illness hits, I need a proper thermometer and something good to read — at least between videos.