DUM SPELLED BACKWARDS IS MUD
It was Wednesday night, and it was a fine night to get to church and hear the Word of God and be uplifted with worship, praise and prayer by a mid-week service. That was the good part. The only wrench in the whole works is the fact that I would be accompanied by my son, four year old Sam. Now this is not a bad thing to be taking a small one to the house of the Lord, for in Proverbs 22:6 it says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This is where four year old Sam needs to be - but somebody needs to tell his mom the kid needs to wear shoes to church that fit.
Hence, my story begins, on this Wednesday evening prior to leaving the house for that service. Sam has a size ten foot and I was aggressively trying to get that foot to fit into a size nine dress shoe. After much sock re-arranging and trying to put it on from this angle and that, Sam finally informed me that the shoes were just too small for his feet. Any other mom would have picked up on that before now from the groans and tormented cries of toe squishing, but in my desperate attempt to make them fit, somehow I was subconsciously blocking out his verbal moans reinforcing the need for an expensive pair of new shoes.
Now in panic stricken mode to find something to adorn his peds in a presentable fashion, I tore apart the pile of separated pairs of shoes in the bottom of his dark closet to see if something sufficient could be found for this one evening. I knew this day was coming, but the thought of going out in search of a new pair of dress shoes was on my long list of fun things to do, right under cleaning my bathtub faucet with a toothbrush. Besides, there had to be a backup up pair in his lair of loafers. The moccasins would not do, nor the summer sandals, the cartoon character tennies or the lovely cowboy boots somehow just did not seem to go with the pair of beige dress slacks and little boy polo shirt. And then I saw them. There in the very back was a pair of hand me down black dress shoes. I breathlessly grabbed them trying to focus on the size located inside. There it was - size twelve. Two sizes bigger than my little man’s feet. Would they work? Sure they would - it was only a couple of inches.
We got out of the car at church and I proudly walked up with my handsomely dressed escort, Sam in case you’re wondering, pulling him along since he was having a hard time walking. Hopefully no one would call him duck feet to his face. I handed him off to the children’s teacher and went to the Wednesday evening service. After the service, I went to collect my bundle of too young for hormones. He had decided to play outside on the church swing with one of the other little kids. That was fine … I thought.
He was happily swinging on a big tire swing as far as I could tell from where I was standing by my car. I thought it time to go and check on him and make sure that the clown shoes weren’t making any unnecessary ruts in the dirt beneath the swing. As I approached, I noticed a big puddle of water directly underneath the big tire swing . This was a big puddle of water surrounded by the woodchips that are in so many kids play areas. This didn’t look dangerous, but it did look as though it could get a bit messy if not handled properly. I therefore admonishingly said to the little fella, "Please be careful and don’t get your clothes dirty." Hence, he stopped swinging, took one step, slipped and fell right in. The once handsomely adorned child was now mud from head to seal flippers. The extra two inches had made the boat shoes a little too much for the young one to successfully maneuver. Fearing he would attract flies, I fished the little piglet out of the murky mire, kissed him and tried to quell the fast falling tears of a broken pride.
So the moral of the story is, take your children to church with dress shoes that fit, because that laundry detergent with the bleach in it to help remove mud from clothing is reeeeeeeeally expensive!
Carol E. Bratland
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