Healing Thumbs

Dean's thumb has been a target of his for quite awhile now. At times, his nervous picking at this thumb with the fingers of that hand has led to open sores. Nobody, even Dean, pays much attention to this "thumb picking" until it gets to this stage. When Dean asks for the Bandaids, I know it's time to build his thumb fortress again to help minimize the damage and give the sores time to heal.

The day after his bath aide successfully built a mighty fortress on his thumb (he could hardly bend it, let alone pick at it), our granddaughter walked in with a similar injury from a paper cut. Unknowingly, her mom had fortified her thumb with a similar bandage.

They were quite a pair, both of them sporting white thumbs.

This thumb can be an example of how sin is in our life. We don't pay it much attention until it gets to the "open sore" stage. Then Jesus graciously covers us, ready to keep those nasty fingernails of temptation from penetrating His white robe of righteousness. If we'd only learn to keep this covering on all the time, the healing underneath would be complete.

Whose Child Is This?

The evidence is mounting that my granddaughter has dementia. It is evidently of a very early-onset variety, but she certainly mirrors her grandpa's symptoms, the more I'm around the two.

For instance, when my three-year-old granddaughter came in the house the other morning (my turn to babysit that day), she was toting a small pearl necklace with a cardboard toilet paper roll threaded on it. Beaming with pride at her own creation, she offered me her new customized jewelry, a string of pearls with a toilet paper roll dangling daintily in front.

I was only slightly saddened to discover that it was too small to fit around my neck, but she quickly thought that our little dog would undoubtedly love to wear it, so we had to try it on her. I must say it was a perfect fit, even though the string broke within an hour, and we had to retrieve all the scattered pearls and of course, the toilet paper roll before they got lost.

This incident involving the toilet paper roll reminded me of something Dean has been doing for awhile now. I have to bury or hide anything of a disposable nature like cardboard paper rolls or plastic bottles, because he wants to find a place for them somewhere in our house. Not quite the decorative effect I desire, and besides our storage space is pretty limited.

Then he gets in the mood to leave love notes for me all over the house. Very sweet, but somewhat a waste of good notepad paper. And this is something he's always telling the granddaughters not to do. They get in "scribbling moods" too.

I'm not getting too worried about who has dementia and who doesn't around here though. There are days when I'm forgetful, easily frustrated, and generally in a cranky senior mood, or maybe it's a toddler mood, come to think of it. I suppose we are all just human after all. And God loves us just the way we are, with all our quirky, juvenile behaviors. We're ALL God's children!

bought this mug for Dean awhile back and was surprised to find out how much he liked it!

Driving Me Crazy

My days are a blur of late. But one bright beam has entered. I won't have to do as much driving every day, as other arrangements have been made for transporting my granddaughter here for me to babysit.

I love my husband (the one with dementia) and I love my granddaughter (the "real" child), but it's very hard to tell them apart when they're both in a car. I can stand one repetitive singer (the one in the carseat), but their duets are something else.

I try not to discourage their performances though, because at least it distracts my backseat driver, who sits in the front seat, from his constant and often dangerous driving instructions. (If I went every time he said the way was clear, for instance, I would have died a thousand deaths by now.)

Isn't that typical of our lives though? The hardest part about getting to heaven is all the driving it takes. This is what wears us out so much. I'm so glad that our God has offered to do the driving for us. But when I have to be at the wheel, I'm glad He's teaching me not to listen to bad driving advice from others. There's a time to listen and a time to tune out. God will show us the times.