When I was growing up, my friends Chip Ivie and Jennie Sue Garrett made a haunted house in the Ivie’s garage on Halloween. They were only one year older than me but in upper elementary / junior high years that translated into “they were cool and I was a pudgy little peon.”
During part of their haunted house they had a sheet hanging up that you couldn’t see behind and had slits cut in the sheet to put your hands through. They would place your hands in bowls filled with spooky stuff and then tell stories about the contents of the bowls. “Eyeballs from my mean cousins that got stabbed by the bell witch!” while sloshing your fingers through runny, slimy eyeballs and playing records backwards for sound effects (get it?:). It scared the piewadden out of me. I remember praying that I wouldn’t throw up and that no one would come up behind me and kill me. It got worse. They put my hands in a bowl of dog brains. Squishy, cold, sticky dog brains. I wondered if their dog Snoopy got the ax in order to contribute to the devils work. I’m sweating just thinking about it.
I would be an awful blind person. Seriously. I don’t know anyone who would say they would be awesome at being blind…or that they would want to find out…but I struggle with staying vertical as is. Throw in my control issues and I would be toast. As a matter of fact, this 30 second “movie trailer” pretty much nails me:
Last week I took my 14 year old on a trip to New York City. One evening we visited the Hersey store in Times Square. While we were there a darling little girl with strawberry blond hair walked in the door (bonus: I heart gingers). She was using a guiding stick and it was apparent she was blind. I couldn’t help but notice her mom, followed by the rest of her family behind her…nudging her along. I thought her mother was expecting a lot out of her and wondered why she would have her daughter maneuver New York City of all the places.
I went about my taste testing and shopping and it ended up that the little girl and her family were behind us at the check out. I struck up a conversation with them. The mom did exactly what I would do with my kids…she expected her to answer me when I spoke to her and to turn her head towards me when we were talking. They were a wonderful family and the little girl was beautiful. My heart hurt for her. I wanted to tell her never to doubt how beautiful she is and then tell her about her lovely strawberry hair, her perfect peachy pale skin and sweet pink lips. I told her how much I admire her courage…but I wanted to say much more. Would an 11 year old girl believe me if I told her how amazing and beautiful she is and how much she touched me in the few minutes our paths crossed? How do you even describe beauty to a person without sight?
Her mother had a gentle strength. I could see how much she loved her daughter and watched over her. Yet, instead of walking in front of her, she walked behind her – letting her daughter know that she was there and would help her when she needed it…encouraging her to go forward.
God’s word says in Psalm 139:5 “You go before me and you follow me.” This verse gives me hope and peace – knowing that God is with me always – but it also reminds me about my part. Trust. Faith. Sometimes I don’t feel like having faith or believing that He is going to catch me. Heck, sometimes faith means that He will allow me to fall! He is still with me. Even though I can’t see Him. Geez that is hard sometimes. That picture of the girl leading blindly through the big city touched me deeply. I think that is what faith looks like for me. To plunge through this life with trust that He’s got me – even with things that bubble up fear for me.
So here’s to me that never pins the tail anywhere near the donkey’s butt and had no idea that I was actually touching peeled grapes and spaghetti noodles at the haunted house.
We can do this!
Learning to trust. Until next time…
One thought on “Dog Brains”
Comments are closed.
Thank you for posting such an awesome blog, late but loved! One of the first haunted houses I attended was during a girl scouts' outing about 1968. It was held in the parking lot of a shopping mall and I was terrified of wetting my pants; the anticipation of the horror to come was too much. I have always hated these events since, and the only other one I have been to was Knott's Scary Farm in SoCal in 1991. Walking through one of the “rooms”, something/someone jumped out at me and I raised my arms over my head, catching my garnet earring in my sweater sleeve. As I lost the earring and yelled at the top of my lungs, here comes, to my rescue, a bunch of costumed ghouls and goblins to help me find my missing earring. Un-frickin-forgettable! It was found, only to be thrown away by the hotel housekeeping maid the next morning after I left it in a tissue instead of putting it back in my earlobe, I thought it would get pulled out again.