Eight and a half years ago I started getting allergy shots. I’m allergic to pollens, dust, and mold. As much as I love spring and the explosion of life this time of year, something deep inside my sinus passages wants to scream, “Noooooooo!” I couldn’t live where we live without these shots. THREE EVERY WEEK.
Disclaimer: Sometimes I want to move to Arizona. There, I said it.
If you’ve tried to tell your kids “It won’t hurt that bad” when they get vaccines, it’s time to accept the ugly truth. It hurts. 🙁 Sometimes I get tired of it, and a couple of times I’ve tried to stop going. Once I even “had it out” with the allergy doc, demanding to know why it hasn’t been a textbook case for me. Wasn’t the idea that I would do this for a few years, introducing the allergens slowly into my system so that I would naturally develop defenses against them? I was not a happy patient.
But then she broke the news to me. Sometimes people are so sensitive (weak?) to the environment and the environment is so full of the triggers that you just need to keep on getting help to manage the effects.
This isn’t a plea for allergy information, I promise. It’s a confession of my sin, I mean the allergies, I battle. I don’t have to roll around in the grass to start sneezing, though it certainly would make matters worse. Just by being in my world, my body feels the effects of what’s toxic to me. The world is full of offenses, toxins, and triggers that make us sick, only the symptoms go far beyond red eyes and itchy skin. Like an allergy attack, sin strangles the life out of us, leaving us gasping for our very life.
The only answer to the sin in the world all around us is a regular inoculation of God’s truth. Weekly is not enough. In this case, in the case of our hearts and minds, we need shots of truth daily. “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word,” (Psalm 119:9).
I’m going to get my three allergy shots today. It’s been a week, and I’m feeling the assault of the world around me. How about you? Have you had your shot of truth today?
