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Changes Today’s Treasure: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). I was an accident waiting to happen. The only one of my parents’ children to be born without the benefit of anesthesia in the days when most mothers preferred the “wake me when it’s over” method of childbirth. My very funny, ever so slightly eccentric mother reminded me quite often just how much I hurt. She would call me every morning on my birthday to say she had the cramps. By noon I would receive some sort of hate mail from the postman. One year it was a card printed in Spanish. Needless to say, I couldn’t read a word of it and neither could she. In fact, it probably wasn’t even a birthday card. The bottom was simply signed, “Love, Mom.” Within a few minutes of my birth, I had an allergic reaction to the eye drops the doctor administered and I formed blood clots on the surfaces of both eyes. Not one of my siblings nor I had any hair until we started school and my skin was so pale and translucent you could see every blood vessel. Blood-shot eyes, a bald head, and see-through skin. I looked like a shiny road map. I was lamenting my rough start to my grandmother once and she replied, “Yep, people used to come by the house and peak into your bassinet and all they could think up to say was, ‘Isn’t she young, though!’” About the time my eyes began to clear, the Army pediatrician pronounced me hopelessly pigeon-toed unless I succumbed to years of corrective shoes. They were the first things I put on in the morning and the last things to drop with a thud from the feather bed I shared with my grandmother at night. They were hideous. The soles were an inch thick. The colors were black and brown. When I grew out of one pair, I grew into another just like them. I longed for black patent leathers and barefoot sandals. Better yet, I wanted to be barefooted…a proud Arkansan’s inalienable right. I wore those wicked things until I went into the first grade, long enough to have developed a lifelong shoe fetish. To this day, when I walk into my closet I want to see shoes. I don’t care what color, what year, or what model. I want to see shoes. The very week I got to shelve my corrective shoes, my older brother, whom I still adore, walked through the door and held his hands out to me. That was my invitation to go flying across the room into his arms. And that’s exactly what I did. Someone had moved a piece of furniture just enough to place a very expensive fold in our oval cord rug. With my freshly straightened feet, I tripped and went airborne. I landed mouth first on the edge of the coffee table, shoving my top baby teeth into the roof of my mouth. In no time at all, my teeth had turned black from the roots I had inadvertently murdered. I couldn’t wait to get those horrible teeth out of my mouth so I could look “pretty” again. When my permanent teeth finally arrived, they grew straight out of my top gums. No, I don’t mean bucked teeth. I mean teeth you could play chess on. Teeth that prevented my lips from touching for years to come. Teeth covered with some sort of metal for twelve solid years. Just about the time I entered fifth grade, my teeth were beginning to look somewhat southward. Then a horrible thing happened. It was something I had dreaded all my life. It had happened to all of my older brothers and sisters one by one. It was the generational curse. I thought fate might be kinder to me since, after all, bucked teeth should be the only suffering a person should ever need to mold her character. I was wrong. It’s a wonder I didn’t feel it happen. The night before it wasn’t even there. I’m quite sure my head was a little heavier to pick up off the pillow, but I’ve suffered memory loss over the trauma. I staggered to the mirror to brush my bushy hair and get ready for school and screamed. There it was. The family nose. And it was a doozy. In no time at all, fish net hose became the latest rage. They came in every conceivable color, and boy, were they cool. Goodness knows, I could’ve used a little cool so I saved my money and stocked up on every shade. Luckily, my mom was not like her stuffy friends. She cheerfully allowed me to make my fashion statement. There was just one catch—she wouldn’t allow me to shave my legs. And did I ever need to shave my legs. The hair on my legs was at least an inch long and when I pulled up my fish nets, which took no small effort, I looked like an eighty-pound porcupine in a chartreuse hair net. By the time I was sixteen, I had been fired from my first job—assistant peanut-butter grinder at “The Nut Hut.” I accidentally ground my thumbnail into a patron’s peanut butter. I might have gotten away with it, but my nails were painted red. Apparently my boss did not consider a broken nail punishment enough. These days a woman could sue over a thing like that. I needed the Lord. In the midst of multi-talented brothers and sisters who had all somehow discovered their niche, no matter what my parents said, I felt ordinary and insignificant. Only one thing seemed to challenge my assessment. That man in those water color pictures my Sunday School teachers continually talked about. The One who calmed the sea, and more impressively a boat full of scaredy cats. The One who thought women were as neat as men. The One who surrounded Himself with children. The One I had accepted as Savior when I was a small child and found myself falling in love with as a young woman. No earth trembling testimony. No tale worth retelling. I met Him at home and fell in love with Him in Sunday School. For a little Cinderella who couldn’t find her Fairy Godmother, He was my hero. My Knight. As the years passed, things changed. I was no longer a nerd. I had grown into my nose a bit. (Trust me. I still show signs of nasal trauma.) Rollers calmed my hair. I was named everything from sorority president and All-Campus Favorite to Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. Everything had changed. Except one. “Jesus Christ…the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). I hadn’t believed much of my own press. I still don’t. Way down, deep inside is that same pigeon-toed, buck-toothed little girl. And way up at my Father’s side is that same Hero that touched the leper’s spots and made him whole. And one day… “…after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes…on a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True…How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:26, 27; Revelation 19:11; Job 19:27). My Lord, thank You for taking the awkward, unlovely things about me and creating beauty from them. Your Word says You have made everything beautiful in its time. Thank You for using the hardships and challenges in my life to produce beauty and fruit. It gives me joy to know those things are not wasted. Create the character of Christ—the unchanging One— within me. In His name I pray, Amen. Adapted from Things Pondered, by Beth Moore, pages 67-70. Nashville: LifeWay Press, 1997). Used by permission.
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