There are certain items I don't really think about needing until I actually need them ... then I get mad at myself for not thinking about them before I need them. And I get especially mad at myself when it's an item I pretty much always kept on hand when my kids lived at home. Take Band-Aids, for example. Of course I always had Band-Aids in the house when my kids were around ... with three kids, I could pretty much count on one or more of them needing a Band-Aid at least once every couple of days if not more often. But now that it's just me and Ollie in the house, Band-Aids aren't something I think about until I need one and they certainly don't make it onto my weekly shopping list. Hence, when the chain link fence took a chunk out of my hand a week or so ago, the only Band-Aids I could find were those little round ones that are only big enough to cover ... actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've never used one of those little round Band-Aids in my life, which probably explains why I have a big stash of them in the cabinet.
I've been thinking a lot about Band-Aids over the last few days, and as I often do when something gets stuck in my mind, I turned to the Google to aid me in my quest for knowledge and discovered facts about Band-Aids I never knew before and unless you're as weird as I am, I'd be willing to bet you don't know them either. The small adhesive bandages were invented in 1920 by a guy whose wife's clumsiness in the kitchen caused her to get lots of cuts and burns when she prepared meals for her family. Earle Dickson was a cotton buyer for a little company called Johnson & Johnson, and he came up with the brilliant idea of placing squares of cotton gauze on adhesive tape and covering them with a crinoline so that his clumsy wife could simply cut a strip of tape and apply the bandage without assistance. Eventually, young Earle's invention evolved into what we know now as the product that sparked one of the most popular advertising tag lines in history ... "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me." I have no idea if Earle's wife got less clumsy over the years when she cooked, but I do knew that because of his sticky, do-it-youself, first-of-its-kind bandage, Earle was promoted to vice president at Johnson & Johnson where he remained until his retirement in 1957.
Now I know you can hardly contain your curiosity as to why I've been musing for days about Band-Aids, so please allow me to explain. Remember how I said the fence took a chunk out of my hand? Well, that stupid chunk of missing skin bled like a water hose for way longer than it should have before it finally stopped enough for me to drive to the store and get some Band-Aids ... real ones and not those stupid little circle ones. I opened the box in the store and slapped a couple of the plastic strips on my wound and didn't think about it again until I woke up the next morning. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world who's put a Band-Aid on a cut or scrape that hasn't completely stopped bleeding and forgotten about it until you start to remove the bandage only to find that it's stuck to your ouchie. I'm pretty sure half my neighborhood heard me that morning when I ripped the firmly stuck Band-Aid off of my hand ... I screamed like a little girl and shed more than a few tears. Don't judge me ... it flipping, stinking hurt like heck and you would have screamed and cried, too.
This afternoon I realized why I haven't been able to stop thinking about Band-Aids ... what lesson I'm supposed to learn, what truth God has been trying to teach me. See, here's the thing ... Band-Aids don't fix my wounds, they only cover them up. Band-Aids are just a way to help me ignore the truth of what lies beneath. Band-Aids don't make me well ... they help me cover up what's wrong with me ... they help me try to keep other people from seeing the ugly parts of me ... they help me hide. As I sat in traffic on my way home this evening, I was jolted out of my bumper-to-bumper induced fog with this thought, this reminder, this moment of clarity as it broke through the clutter of my day ... sometimes the only right thing to do is rip off the Band-Aid ... sometimes the only way that good can triumph is for the Band-Aid to be torn away. Go ahead think on that one for a while ... a really good long while.
It's time to get rid of the Band-Aids, friends ... it's way past time to get rid of the Band-Aids ... way, way, way past time.
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