Pricks

Last week my elastic broke.

Like every other well-dressed writer here in Florida in the midst of a drought and 98+ degree weather, my work uniform consists of a cotton tee shirt and a pair of swim trunks. I usually work barefoot too.

Being of robust physique, I place a certain amount of strain on my swim trunks and last week the elastic waistband broke. Any time I got up from my desk to even walk across the room, I had to keep one hand in my pocket to keep my trunks from dropping to my ankles.

I have other swim trunks but this pair is my favorite; I’m reluctant to give them up.

In my many, many years as the father of six children I have learned a few things.

So while Ginny shopped for other things in the Wal-Mart, I wandered into the new-born and infants section looking for diaper pins.

Couldn’t find any.

I ask two sales ladies. One had never even heard of diaper pins (too young); the other had heard of them but could not recall having seen any for years. The three of us searched high and low and eventually found a card of four diaper pins on a side aisle spike.

Diaper pins are extra-large safety pins used to hold cloth diapers (apparently those are no longer stocked either) onto a baby; Disposal paper diapers used tape.

I don’t think there was any such thing as disposal diapers when our kids were little, only cotton cloth squares to be folded into triangles and pinned at the points. Bet I could still do it. These diapers needed to be washed and Ginny and I still remember how to do that too.(We did not own a washing machine in those days and diapers had to be done by hand — something you don’t forget).

The big selling point of diaper pins is that they sport a large head with a snap so that the pin will not spring open and prick the baby.

Supposedly.

Once home, I gathered a pleat in my swim trunks and pined it securely in front right where a belt buckle would be.

Looked a bit odd but since I work alone 95% of the time, who’s to notice or care?

Worked fine.

Until…

I saw a bug earlier this morning — an unusual occurrence, unheard of here in Florida (according to the Chamber of Commerce).

I squatted down to swat it with a shoe — and my diaper pin sprang open.

I noticed immediately.

Those things hurt!

A pin in the bellybutton provokes a response (I wonder if that’s why babies used to cry so much?).

As the rare, strange, unusual, unheard of roach escaped, a Scripture verse sprang into my mind. It relates to the conversion of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

He’d been persecuting Christians when a bright light knocked him off his horse and a voice from Heaven spoke to Paul.

Paul said, “Who art thou, Lord”?

The shining Speaker identified Himself as Jesus and said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks”.

Now it’s easy for me to think that Jesus was warning Paul about getting along with other Christians.

But, Bible scholars say that’s not what the verse means.

Apparently, Jesus was referring to pricks of conscience, those little thoughts that nudge us toward God even when we don’t want to think about Him, those ideas that come seemingly out of no where that make us uncomfortable with what we are and what we do.

Pricks of conscience. That sudden bitter-sweet yearning for Home, that hunger that can not feed on this land’s bread, that longing for Something more, that yearning for Someone we will only recognize when we see Him.

The still, small voice of God. The voice we recognize, but don’t want to.

These pricks are hard to escape, to avoid, to rationalize, to ignore.

When God tells you something, you know it. Down deep, He is hard to ignore — but that’s possible if we really set our minds to it. God is a gentleman; He doesn’t rape anybody. If we insist, He will let us go our own way (wherever that leads).

It is hard to kick against the pricks — but it is possible.

So, when I felt the prick of the open diaper pin this morning, maybe, just maybe, it was a prick from God telling me to loose weight.

Nah! That can’t be right. God loves me just as I am, doesn’t He? Perhaps I should study the Scripture to be sure if that is what He’s telling me.

Trouble is, as my friend Barbara said in one of her newspaper columns: God loves us just as we are, and too much to let us stay that way.

Here’s an odd aside:

Back 30 years ago or so, the elastic in my undershorts broke and I could not find a safety pin to hold them up. I rummaged in Ginny’s jewelry box and came up with this huge costume jewelry broach given her by her mother. It glittered with sparkling red, green, yellow and blue stones.

No one will ever see I thought, and pined the front of my drooping underwear together. I was a bachelor once and I remembered how guys repair clothing.

As I padded down the hall in my briefs from shaving in the bathroom to our bedroom to dress, I encountered the kids in the hall.

“What’s that you’re wearing, Daddy,” they chorused.

“Hush! Go back to your rooms,” I said. “Those are the family jewels”.

Thirty plus years have passed and the rascals still tease me about that.

I’ll never live it down.