A Good Day, A Bad Day, & A Day For Psalms

This morning, the prayers of King David in Psalm 3:7 and Psalm 58:6 stand as the uppermost Bible verses in my mind.

On the other hand, Saturday was one of my best days ever. Ginny and I slept late then spent over an hour leisurely discussing the merits of various places we might go for breakfast—the kind of lingering comfortable unhurried conversations that make the best moments of a long marriage.

We eventually picked a place where we found a corner table and sipped coffee and munched cinnamon toast till noon.

Then we began packing away Christmas decorations, pausing to reminisce about where we got this one or that one because we have accumulated such decorations for 40 years and they all have pleasant associations.

After a late lunch we watched a video—The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain. A fine film.

We separated to toy with various unhurried projects in deep but silent companionship.

I just can’t describe what a nice, nice day Saturday was.

Then Sunday it all went to Hell.

She woke grumpy in a deep mood swing.. I woke angry about a stupid dream that did not make the grade as a nightmare but was nonetheless upsetting. I tried to find a booth in a crowded restaurant for myself, an old man who looked like Ed Asner, and two or three kids. But every time I’d spot an empty table and push through the crowd, someone else would get to the table ahead of me. Frustrating!

All day long we snapped at eachother, got in eachother’s way, misunderstood what eachother said, put things in the worse possible light, and bumped heads.

Nothing had changed since Saturday, but everything was different.

Odd that.

In the afternoon we agreed to avoid making any of the decisions we’d planned to make. “This is just not a good day to decide anything,” she said.

We still love eachother but it was just a bad bad day for us.

After she left for work this morning, I pulled a tooth that has annoyed me since before Christmas. I did not want to fool with it before Patricia’s wedding for fear of messing myself up, so I put up with the pain and delayed pulling it till now.

But, this morning I had no reason to put the job off any more.

I pulled it myself for two reasons:

Ginny and I are concerned about medical expenses for the coming year and I did not want to waste our limited resources for such a thing this early in the year.

My other reason for doing it myself is my great aversion to being touched. I panic when a nurse wants to handle me for a complicated medical procedure like checking my blood pressure. And I’ve cut my own hair for years to avoid having a barber touch me, so why subject myself to a dentist’s touch when it’s possible to pull the tooth myself?

This makes sense to me.

But I don’t recommend pulling your own teeth to other people.

It does hurt a bit.

That reminds me of those two Psalms:

Psalm 3:7 -- Arise , O LORD; save me, O my God: for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.

Psalm 58:3-6-- The wicked …go astray as soon as they be born… Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.

Scripture is so comforting in times of pain, isn’t it?