Joyful Transformation

When I was a teenager my house was the hang-out for the church kids. We had a Sears pool table, a ping pong table, a basketball goal and a volley ball net. The best thing was a basement where we could play music and the adults (thanks Mom) would leave us alone. All total probably less than $200.00, but great entertainment for kids.

One autumn evening before I was close to getting my drivers license, we were having such an outing. We cooked up the grand scheme to go yard “rolling”. Problem was we didn’t have and toilet paper or any money. My mother would have killed us all had I used any from her bathroom closet. So we decided to tear up magazines and papers and scatter over the yard of my hapless cousin who happened to not be at home, or at the outing. This was probably not wise on my part, in those days I wrote my name on everything repeatedly. Anyway, after one successful venture, my friend Libby and I decided to take off on our own to take care of another cousin’s yard. All of these cousins lived in pretty close proximity to us and we could get to this other cousins house the back way by cutting up between the chicken houses. Well we were walking along talking and cutting up when all of sudden the ground was no longer there. I didn’t understand what was happening but I was falling. With a sickening realization, I remembered that my Dad had been in the process of cleaning out the chicken pits. These were holes in the ground where we threw our dead chickens. The usual covers had been removed and the hole widened to where it was just perfect for an unsuspecting teenager bent on mischief to fall into. Suddenly I find myself up to my knees in decaying chickens, maggots, mud and who knows what else. My friend quickly recovered from her desperate concern only to fall into hysterical laughter. What a plight! Here I was sinking in guts and the only person who could save me couldn’t quit laughing at me! Well eventually she did calm down enough to give me a hand and pull me out. We went back to the house, me smelly and nasty to take the abuse of my brother and his friends. Needless to say they never let Donna live down falling in the chicken pit.

Recently I told this story to my Wednesday night class. I asked them what I needed while I was in the pit. Did I need someone to tell me that I shouldn’t have been trying to roll yards? Did I need someone to tell me how low I had sunk and how bad I smelled? Did I need anyone to tell me that I should have been watching where I was going? No, I needed a friend who was not afraid of getting a little dirty in the process to lend me a hand and pull me out. There are people in your lives and in mine that need us to reach out our hands. There are enough people in the world that will push them back in the pit while scolding them for getting there in the first place. When you find a brother or sister in the pits, will you be the one to give them a hand?