I've Had Worse Places On My Eyeball

Have I mentioned that my Dad grew up in Texas?  He had some sayings that only folks from Texas knows what mean, you either had to be born and raised there or have spent a number of years there to 'relate' to them in any way.  Other people kind of look at you strange when you use these sayings, and they usually go right over their heads.  So you then spend the next several minutes explaining what it means.

Here is an example of when this term, ''worse places on my eyeball'' would be used, whether appropriate or not.

I think I was about 9 at the time, as usual running everywhere I went.  Because of this I was 'rail thin' ,as people would say, and all legs.  I had been sent to the far end of the field checking the electric fence as I went, making sure the wire was securely in the insulators on the poles around the alfalfa fields.  The hay was almost waist high on me and just budding out, ready to be cut and then baled.

Having finished my job I was in a 'high lope' back to the house and had just cleared the hay and entered into some tall Jose` grass when my right knee slammed into something I couldn't get my leg back off of.  I was trying not to 'scream like a girl' and not throw up and pull my leg back off of what turned out to be a piece of angle iron leaning out from an old feeder hidden by the grass.  The steel was rammed into my kneecap and trying to stand on one leg and use both hands to get my leg free was not going according to plan.

After a few minutes, seemed more like years, I know now it was several minutes only, I got my leg off the thing.  I stood for a while with my hand over my kneecap trying to regain some composure and figure out how I was going to get all the way back to the house, I could barely stand to put my foot flat on the ground with any weight on it at all.  I was so close to screaming from the pain, I knew I was going to have problems.

It hurt so bad, I kept my hand over my kneecap and 'gallumped' to the house, calling on Jesus with every step to just help me, with each step saying His name.  When finally I saw the house and my Dad standing in the driveway, alas, redemption I thought, I will be given some horse lineament or something to put on it and all would be well.

Very near collapse in my youthful trauma, when I reached my Dad and could pull up my pants leg to show him my horrific injury and wonder with him what we could do to save my leg, he said to me, ''Aw, babe, I've had worse places than that on my eyeball''.

He didn't mind if you cried when you got your feelings hurt, but he sure didn't expect to have you 'go to pieces' just because you got 'banged up a little'.

Later as I sat on the edge of the canal under the trees in 'my place' contemplating all this, I thought about all that Jesus had been through willingly and on my behalf, and I had a long talk with Him about my hurts, both external and internal, and let Him know how grateful I was for the pain that He endured, since I could now relate, somewhat, to what it must have felt like to have his hands and feet nailed to a chunk of wood.