FIRECRACKERS, CIGARETTES, AND GOD

When I was a kid, my grandmother put an empty milk jug in the fork of a small tree in front of our house, to keep birds away, if I remember correctly. I loved firecrackers and she would buy me some once in a while. I was going to light one and drop it into the jug to see if anything close to what I was imagining would happen. So, I lit the firecracker with a match, then started to drop it into the jug, but before I could let it go, it exploded, making my ears ring, and making my fingers black, and throbbing with pain. I had a ringing in my right ear for the rest of the day. Lesson learned.

I was a very impressionable child. I had so many ideas, but such low self-esteem. I didn’t like who I was, so I wanted to be like others. When my sister got glasses, I wanted glasses.

I also wanted a cast on my arm. Maybe because our preacher’s son had one. It was a short one that only went about halfway up his forearm. I thought it was cool, so maybe that’s why I wanted one. Like I told one of my friends when I was telling this story to them, I was the dumbest kid that I have ever known in my entire life, and you’ll probably agree with me when I tell you this next thing. I wanted a cast on my arm so bad that I tried to break my own arm. It embarrasses me right now just telling you this, but it’s important.

Remember that small tree with the fork in our front yard? Well, I put my arm in the fork and tried bending it back in order to break it. See what I mean? I was a dumb kid. Thankfully, I chickened out and gave up. To this day, I’ve never had a broken bone, unless you count my fractured skull when I was in elementary school.

I really liked the preacher’s son and looked up to him. I thought he was so cool. He must have really been, because all the other kids at church thought he was, too. He dipped, so I wanted to dip. My grandmother bought me a can of Skoal and gave it to me. I tried to taste it a few times, but it smelled awful. When I finally taste it, it was awful, so I just walked around with it in my back pocket for a few weeks, then I gave up the idea. I tasted chewing tobacco by sticking it to my tongue, and it was not good at all, so I didn’t try anything like that again.

My aunts and uncles smoked cigarettes. My mother smoked Prince Albert tobacco that had to be rolled up in papers. She rolled three for me, put them in a can half full of tobacco, and gave me some papers and some matches. I walked around with those for a few days and never even let one. Eventually, I gave that idea up as well.

As a kid, I did and wanted to do some things that were not healthy for me, but there were several things I wanted to do that were good. I wanted to be a firefighter, a police officer, and a preacher, among many other things. I guess I wasn’t completely full of bad ideas.

As I look back on those days, I can see how God worked to guide me in the right direction, although I left the path several times in pursuit of things that were not good for me. I’m thankful for those experiences because they help me now to kind of understand how other people can make bad decisions in life.

I thank God for the good and wise people that he put in my life when I was growing up. I’m so thankful for my grandmother teaching me about Jesus and helping me to learn to love his holy word, the Bible. When I look back to my childhood, I see how much my thoughts and ideas have improved, and that gives me hope for the future. With God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).

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THE POND, THE FORK, AND THE MUD PIES

I think was six years old, when we moved into our new house in Theo Mississippi. It was white with a shiny silver roof. It was in the same neighborhood where we had lived since I could remember. In the new house, my little sister and I each had our own bedroom. The living room in this house was bigger than in the house we had moved from, and we had a bathroom with a tub and water inside the house. We had hot water, too, so we no longer had to heat water to bathe in. We had moved up in the world. Our yard was about the same size as our old one but the layout was a bit different. We had more yard in the front but the side of the house was about the same distance away from the road that the front of our old house was, but it sat on a hill several feet higher than the road.

The house was much nicer, too. It had painted wood inside and nice, aluminum-framed, energy-efficient windows. It even had a storm house. There were several nice, big trees and one of them was a walnut tree. There were plum trees and persimmon trees and beautiful rose bushes all along the property next to the road. The landlord had a cornfield by the side of the driveway in front of the house and he told us we could get all the corn we wanted any time we wanted it. It was like a paradise.

We were excited about our new home, and so was our dog, Clete. I remember making mud pies there for the first time. Somebody gave us an Easy Bake Oven. It didn’t work, but we pretended it did. We made a grocery store and stocked it with empty containers that our grandmother saved for us when they were all used up. We had cereal boxes, oat boxes, milk cartons and jugs, butter bowls, and lots of empty cans. We would play store for hours.

One day, not long after we moved in, a good rain came. There was plenty of mud for some mud pies. I guess we got tired of that after a while. How many mud pies can a kid make anyway? We were just outside the bathroom window and the siding was made from sheets of something white with an orange peel texture. I just remember how pretty and white it was. I think I threw one of the mud pies and it stuck on the white wall. Then maybe my sister threw another one. The next thing I remember is both of us with our backs to the wall, bending over with our hands in the red clay mud, throwing it behind us between our legs, all over that pretty white wall.

When my grandmother saw what we had done she was more than a little upset. After the yelling and the lecture, she made us clean up the mess. We scrubbed as hard as we could for what seemed like forever but we just could not get it back to the pretty clean white that it was before. Our grandmother saw that we had done our best so she tried, but those stains never did come clean. They were still there six years later.

There was a pond on the other side of the small field behind the house but it was fenced in with barbed wire. We weren’t allowed to go there by ourselves, until several years later. I once got some water from there to take to school for science class. We looked at a drop of it under a microscope and saw a creature with a big head and huge horns. It looked like a bull with no legs. When I was older I went there by myself a couple of times but that was it. I never went back. It just wasn’t as exciting as I had imagined for all those years.

When we were older, I was annoying my sister and she got mad and threw some tea on me. I had a bad temper, and before I could think, I threw a fork at her and the points of the prongs stuck in the side of her head. I was sorry I did it when I realized how bad she could have been hurt. I could have even put her eye out.

Sometimes as I look back at my childhood, I remember some things that I’m not proud of. I’ve often wished that I could forget every bad thing that I’ve done and every bad thing that has ever happened in my life, but I realized that those bad experiences are part of what has made me who I am today. Testing and trials build character and how we react in any given situation tells us, as well as others, what kind of person we really are. We should learn from our mistakes and wrong choices. If nothing else, we should at least realize that we can’t make it on our own, and that prompts us to seek the help of our Creator.

So, when you look back at your past and remember things you wish you could forget, take a closer look at those things to see if you learned anything from them. If you didn’t, then examining them may help you to put everything in perspective and maybe you’ll be able to deal with your past a little bit better. Then, leave the past behind and hold on to the good memories and cherish each and every one of them. They are part of what made you who you are, too.

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A BOY, A SNAKE, TWO WOLVES, AND A SONG

When I was young, my grandmother told me a story about a young boy and a snake. The boy’s mother gave him some milk with some cornbread mixed with it. Like he had done the last few times she fed him, he took his food and went outside.

When she decided to go out and see what he was doing, she found him sitting by the rock chimney feeding a snake. It scared her so bad that she grabbed her son and ran back into the house with him, and began checking him to see if he had been bitten. I don’t remember if there was a moral to the story, or if it was even true. My grandmother was part Native American, and she told us lots of stories from Native American culture as well as fairy tales, from children’s books.

There are many old Indian tales that are very interesting. Like the one about how snakes got their poison, and the one about how the world was created. I like the one about the two wolves living inside every person. It is a metaphor explaining the two natures that we all have. The good nature and the bad one. The moral of that story is that whichever one you feed will be the strongest.

This same idea can be found in the Bible. There, it refers to the old man of sin and the new man in Christ. Whichever one we feed will grow strong and thrive. There’s a good little kid's song that I learned very early in my childhood that came from that very idea. It says,

“Oh, be careful little eyes what you see.”

“Oh, be careful little ears what you hear.”

“For the Father up above is looking down in love.

So be careful little eyes what you see (hear).”

That’s a great little song with a great big message. We have to guard our minds and be careful about what we see and hear. That’s what God tells us throughout the Bible.

Proverbs 4:23 says, Guard your heart (mind) with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

We have to be careful where we go, and what we say and do as well. Those are other lines in the song. 1st Thessalonians 5:22 says, Refrain from all forms of evil. 

The first verse in the book of Job tells us that Job was a holy man that revered God and went out of his way to avoid evil. If we want to remain holy we have to do the same thing. We have to be careful where we go.

Both the song and the Bible also show us that we should watch what we say and do. This is very important. When I was a young Christian, I remember hearing a few older Christians cursing. I’ll never forget how shocked I was. I couldn’t believe a saved person would say things like that. Then I learned that many Christians don’t see anything wrong with it at all, but the Bible says they’re wrong.

2 Timothy 2:16 

16 But shun profane and vain talking: for they will lead to more ungodliness.

Did you get that? Using profanity leads to ungodliness. People who want to be godly should avoid profanity. In Matthew 12:34, Jesus said, "...out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Our words show what’s in our hearts. I know that to be true from my own personal experience.

James 1:26 

26 If any of you think you are religious and don’t bridle your tongue, but you deceive your own heart, your religion is worthless.

“So be careful little (and big) lips what you say.”

Don’t be buddies with the snake. Feed the good wolf and avoid all evil like it’s the Plague, and grow more godly.

For an in-depth study of what God says about using profanity read What’s Wrong With Using Profanity?

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LAUGHTER IS GOOD MEDICINE

In this life, we all have pain and sorrow. We all have stress from our daily routines of work and other responsibilities. We all have times when we feel down. We all have days when we don’t feel good and days when we’re literally in pain.

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 17:22, that, “A merry heart does good like a medicine.” I’ve found this to be so true.

The word MERRY in this verse means cheerful, and the word HEART is just another word for MIND. So “A cheerful mind does good like a medicine,” or we could say, “being happy is good like medicine.” I like that verse, and it's completely accurate. When I’m feeling bad, and something makes me laugh, I actually feel better.

I don’t sleep well most nights and when I get up in the mornings, I usually don’t feel well at all. One morning when I woke up, I was feeling really, really bad. While I was trying to muster up the strength to get ready for work, I just happened to remember something funny from my childhood. It made me laugh out loud, and it actually made me feel a little better. I want to share that story with you, and maybe you can have a laugh, too.

I think I was around six years old, and my sister was four or five. Our older cousin was at our house visiting for the day. When he would come over he would entertain us with his wild stories. We loved his tall tales so we would listen intently as he tried to amuse us. I don’t know where he was going with this story, though because laughter interrupted his flow. All I remember is what my sister said just as he was getting started.

He said, “If you pull a hair out of your nose you’ll die.” My sister looked at him with her eyes as big as the moon. Then he calmly said, “I pulled a hair out of my nose one time.” Before he could say anything else, my sister gasped, as her eyes got even bigger, and with deep concern in her voice, she said, “Did you die?”

That’s still so funny to me, and no matter how many times it cycles through my memory, it still makes me laugh. I loved my early childhood, and I miss it. We didn’t have much at all, but we didn’t know it. Everything seemed so simple. We had no worries, no cares, and no big responsibilities, but we did have lots of love, and plenty of fun times to remember.

I hope you have plenty of good memories in your past. When you’re feeling bad, or sick, or a little down, try to remember one or two that will make you laugh or at least smile. I promise it’ll make you feel better.

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© 2015 Teddy Lynn – All Rights Reserved

My books are available in paperback and digital format on Amazon @
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