Of Dead Mice and Flawed Men

Decades ago, I was playing a game with a group of people, and I drew a card that instructed me to share something I feared.  I honestly couldn't think of anything I feared at the time, but I have been reminded many times since of my phobia.  I have a horrible fear of dead mice....not live ones....dead ones.  I can hold a pet mouse.  I can watch one run around outside...or even inside after the initial scream from being startled.  But, I totally freak out over dead mice.

Today, Bill and I were at our cottage cleaning up for the season.  I always put out D-Con in the fall.  As I cleaned the cottage today, I discovered every single D-Con package was empty.  I began to wonder where the mice had gone to die.  I wasn't noticing an odor anywhere....although they don't usually rot with the D-Con.  They just sort of shrivel up and don't smell.

Eventually, I came to the time that I was ready to mop, and I needed to change the sponge on the mop.  I was having trouble getting it off, so I opened the drawer with the tools.  Ugh!  It smelled like mousy-pee and there was an obvious nest with the back end and tail of a dead mouse sticking out of it.  I ran for my husband.

What, you may wonder, is the reason for this totally irrational aversion to dead mice?  

When I was a child, we lived in a house in the middle of an open field.  It wasn't unusual for a field mouse to find its way inside.  My Dad would set a trap and catch the mouse.  THEN...he would take the dead mouse by the tail and chase me around the house with it.  I have no idea why he thought this was funny.  He didn't seem to realize he was completely terrorizing me.  On one occasion he came up behind me, pulled open the back of the neck of my shirt and pretended he was going to drop the mouse into it.  I developed the habit of locking myself in the bathroom when he was about to empty the trap.  Once he even came to the bathroom door and said, "Honey, I got rid of it," but when I opened the door he was swinging it by the tail right at my face.  From then on, I would not unlock the bathroom door until my Mother came to the door and told me he had disposed of it.

My Dad was basically a nice man.  He was a Christian, and he didn't believe in lying.  How he could have excluded this game of his from his normal standard of conduct, I do NOT know.  He had some other "games" I found unpleasant which he seemed to believe were funny.  He also had some "pet names" for me that were ego-bruising.  I suppose this behavior had something to do with his own father's conduct.

The  point is, even though this has had a lasting effect that I can't seem to get over, I do have to forgive him for it.  He was flawed, but then, so am I.  Every one of us lacks insight in some area of our life.  There are, for each of us, some areas in which our perception just doesn't match that of the rest of the world, or perhaps, that of one person who is harmed by our actions.

As Christians, we are recipients of the grace of God in our lives.  He forgives our sins...and that includes the personality quirks that we spend a life-time struggling against.  We have an obligation to forgive others...even before they ask for our forgiveness...even if they never ask for our forgiveness,   We have an obligation to extend grace to other flawed men and women.