The Prayer

When Avery was born, I made a deal with God. Well, not so much a deal because I've heard that God doesn't make deals, but I threw an offer out there that apparently, He couldn't refuse. I prayed for a lifetime of little stuff to go wrong and that we would never have anything big to deal with. I said "I hope we have little 'uh-ohs' daily so that we never have a sick child/spouse or serious accident or anything like that." I believe God listened. And I also believe that God has a sense of humor. We have had our share of little things. It seems like, if something is going to go wrong, it does. It happens almost daily in our house. The latest is one that has me saying "Why me?" and then I remember. The Prayer.

I was bitten on the face by an ant. I have a bad history with ants anyway and I'm severely allergic to a certain kind of fire ant, so they aren't my favorite insect anyway. But who in the hell has ever been bitten on the face by one? Of course, since I practically begged God to torture me daily, it's me. It happened in boot camp Saturday. We were doing some sort of demented, harder-than-heck push-up. Our instructor always tells us to go down as far as we can. So I did. We were in the grass, so my face was touching the grass on the down portion of the exercise. Apparently, an ant was just sitting there waiting for me to come down again because on about my third down time, I felt something stinging my face, right next to my eye. It burned severely. And then I felt another one on my cheek. I saw ants crawling around my hands and I knew that's what it had been.
I tried to finish my push-ups because I was too embarrassed to stand up and have everyone see that I was bitten in the stupid face by a stupid ant. Of course it didn't happen to anyone else. Why would it? No one else prayed The Prayer. Just me.
I did finally have to stand up and use my water to try to rinse my face because it was burning so badly. But thankfully, it wasn't the bad kind of fire ant because I didn't have a reaction. And my friend looked at it and said that it was a bit red, but you couldn't even tell.
When I got home that day, I couldn't see anything. Whew. That was just a little "uh-oh." Just the kind I was talking about. Thank goodness. How stupid would I feel if I had to walk around with ant bites ON MY FACE? Pretty stupid. I mean, I would feel so stupid I wouldn't even want to leave the house. I wouldn't want to have to say "I got bit by an ant. "In the face????" "Yep. In the face. Yes, I am an idiot and ridiculous things like this happen to me all the time. You wanna make something of it?"
Thank goodness that wasn't going to happen. There were no obvious bites. It itched a bit, but the important thing was that you couldn't see anything. Double whew.

Hey, guess what I learned yesterday? Ant bites fester overnight and don't turn into a stupid, red, obvious bump until the day after.
The moral of this story...don't ever think you've escaped the ridiculous. Especially if you are me.