My poor mother. I still remember the look of frustration on her face. No, she wasn’t trying to get me take a bath, or worse, sit still. She was trying to get me to take my medicine.
As a child, I had a mental block about taking pills because I was terrified of getting of getting choked on them. Had that happened to me? Nope. Had I seen that happen to anybody else? Nope. It was a byproduct of my overactive imagination.
What medicine did I have to take? The most horrid tasting stuff ever to have been made on the planet earth: liquid penicillin. If you have never taken it, you should definitely thank the Lord. As much as I love words, I simply can’t find the ones to do the disgusting taste justice.
Dread filled my soul when my mother said, “It’s time for your medicine.”
I would plaster my hands over my mouth and shake my head no. After minutes of her pleading and me crying, I would finally open my mouth for the nasty spoonful. It didn’t end there.
Once the medicine was in my mouth, I refused to swallow it. I don’t remember how long I held it there as my mother tried to coax me into swallowing it: “The longer you hold it in your mouth, the longer you are going to taste it.”
After it finally went down, she would then hand me a cracker to get the taste out of my mouth and to keep me from gagging.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV).
Even though my mom knew my medicine had a hideous taste, she knew my taking it was the only way I could get better. Many times, it’s the same thing with our relationship with God. We have to suffer or endure unpleasant circumstances that will help us in the end. If we fight it instead of listening to Him, we only make it worse on ourselves.
The last few weeks our dog, Roxy, has been on medication. I place her meds inside pill pockets and feed them to her. The pockets are flavored peanut butter and chicken. Of course, I felt a little jealous. Why didn’t they have stuff like this when I was a kid? I would’ve loved to had a chocolate-flavored pill pocket. Heck, I wouldn’t mind them now for my meds. You know, I could use the peanut butter one.