As I'm sitting here in my bed for the second day in a row, watching my sick little boy finally resting peacefully, I am reminded of a story from my childhood. This story had an everlasting effect on me, and I instantly had a desire to look it up and write a blog about it. During my googling endeavours, however, I stumbled upon a blog that was so close to what I wanted to write, that it's kind of redundant for me to write my own.
I will still tell my readers about this story, and share the bang-on blog at the end of my post. Many of you, or maybe not so many of you may be familiar with Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories. They were a series of Christian children's books that came out in the 1960's. If you were a child in the 1970's, as I was, you may have also had this collection of books on your bookshelf. The books were compilations of stories that were said to be real-life stories of good Christian values. My personal favourite, was one of some little girls; I remember the illustrations so vividly: girls with pretty, floral dresses, bobby socks and mary-jane shoes, with shiny ringlets adorned with ribbon-tied bows. I was a sucker for that kind of girly-girl, squeaky clean wholesomeness when I was young. These little girls would sew their own doll clothes for their beautiful old-fashioned dolls. Nothing in the world seemed more wonderful to me than that. I can't even remember what the moral of that story was, but I'm sure that I studied that illustration of the pretty girls with their dolls and carriages for hours on end.
The books were definitely a piece of my childhood, and I remember reading them and enjoying them. There was one story, however, that traumatized me (and obviously not just me) a bit, and I haven't forgotten it to this day. I don't remember the name of this story, but I remember that it was about a boy who had been hit by a car. He was in the hospital, and obviously was in a lot of pain; so much so, that he wished he would die. Let's keep in mind that this is a "bedtime story". The boy had it in his head that all he had to do was ask Jesus to take him, and he would. Another boy who shared his room in the hospital told him that Jesus came into the room each night, and that if he just raised his hand, that he would take him. The little boy knew what he had to do, but he was so weak that he could not keep his arm up. The other little boy, being the saint that he was, helped his roommate by propping his arm up on a pillow so that Jesus would see that he wanted him to take him to heaven. Jesus did take the boy that night, and that was it. Couldn't that other little boy be guilty of euthanasia, or something? You can imagine my horror as a child, when I would awake in the night and notice that my arm was in such a position that it was slightly erect. OH MY GOSH! I could have died tonight! I must be more careful! Seriously, I was actually concerned that Jesus might get the wrong idea and take me when I wasn't ready to go. I still think about it to this day, and panicked slightly when I glanced over to see my sick little boy with his arm pointing upward between the mattress and the pillow.
