Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Why I never wear lipstick:

Because when I was 3 I ATE MY MOM'S LIPSTICK and then spit it out in the toilet. And it tasted TERRIBLE. Why would I ever put that near my mouth again?! It was an awful experience and actually during the same covert operation I ended up cutting off my pony tail at the rubber band along with any bangs I had hanging in my face.
Do you ever have thoughts like "why is God keeping me alive?", in a genuinely curious way. Just wondering what plan He has going on in his head for your life and why he spared you from the many close calls you've experienced in your life? Here are a few of mine:
Germany. 1989. I am 1 year old. We lived in a square 4 story house that had spiral staircases running up all over the place. I crawled away from my mom and ended up hanging by a foot (which was wedged between the rungs of the banister) over a set of steep marble spiral stairs dropping 25 feet into the basement of the house. Talk about a close call...
Germany. 1990ish. My brother Eddie (3) and I (2) were sitting on the floor playing with scissors. He was doing the whole open shut open shut game with me while explaining how truly dangerous scissors were when all of the sudden, open SHUT! as I stuck my chubby little index finger in the middle of all the action. Finger= almost gone. BUT after some swift maneuvering on the autobon by my mother straight to the hospital, my finger remains intact to this day and looking a little cooler and wiser with a scar.
Florida. 14 years old? With the family at our yearly cousins beach club extravaganza and I'm painting my nails with all my aunts and girl cousins. As I go to set the nail polish remover down the bottle hits the table hard and some remover splashes out of the bottle and into my left eye. 2 hours of eye-water-flushing later and my eyesight recovered. It was only a few years later making soap alone in a bike shed that I splashed lye-based liquid (has been known to eat through flesh in seconds) out of a container and into both my eyes (mostly my right) and thanks to more endless eye-flushing and a string of "oh Jesus please not my eyesight" ejaculations AND perhaps it helped that I wore contacts that took most of the heat (they were almost completely melted/disintegrated), I survived. Anyway, I've always said that the Lord must have some special purpose for my eyes because the enemy is always trying to sabotage them. (I just love the word sabotage, like, sooo much. I want to say it all the time. "Sabotage, sabotage, sabotage," say it with me!)
And then there was 2003. Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina. Sitting in my uncle's living room and thinking "oh my, this might be how I die" as I watched trees snapping in half outside the window and an especially ambitious tree went careening through the house and came to rest on the sleeping bag I had just crawled out of an hour before. (At the time I was more concerned about the fact that my cell phone was by my sleeping bag and I might not be able to text my crush back for a while)(didn't think about the fact that cell phone service was impossible anyways).
There's also the morning I woke up and tried to step out of bed only to collapse on the floor and feel pain shooting through my right leg. I pulled myself down the stairs (sound dramatic? it was.) and was brought to the hospital that night to have surgery on my right hip where a staff infection had been festering and (completely unbeknownst to me) close to crippling me. Sweet memorial scar: check.
So, what I know so far is... God has a plan for my life involving my eyesight, legs, index finger, and the ability to hang from great distances by my foot while avoiding falling objects. Sound like a great movie, anyone?

I'm not too concerned about it as long as He knows I'm not going to be wearing lipstick for any of it...

3 comments:

Christine said...

You are indestructible, cousin! I remember the panic I felt when you got the polish remover in your eye.
I am glad that you are blogging.
I find your posts very amusing, and it makes me miss you...

Jeremy said...

I love this post so much. You live dangerously, and I LIKE it! I'm very glad you're still around. I know there are big plans in motion for Amelie Jezebelle Miltenberger.

merilee said...

Oh my! Love your recent bloggings, Aimee! Also like how your feed says I'm from "Sherwood," Arkansas...kind of cuter sounding than Jonesboro, actually!