Skinny Legs and All

When I was a child my mother would say, “I love you, skinny legs and all.”  Or she would say I had “Kemper legs” which are “ropes with knots tied in the middle of them.”  You see, I am named after my mom’s cousin, Kemper, and I suppose she too was loved skinny legs and all. 

I remember sometimes I would have what we might call “growing pains” in my legs in the middle of the night. You’d think with the frequency in which this occurred I’d be taller by now.  Anyway,  I would wake up with one of my legs aching and I would descend the ladder of my bunkbed as if I were in need of medical attention.  I would go into mom and dad’s room, wallowing in between them to complain of my plight.  If nothing else, having an only child can be terribly dramatic. 

One of my parents would get out of bed, stumble into their adjoining bathroom and take out the huge jar of Vaseline they kept in the cabinet.  They would return to bed and rub the miracle ointment on my aching muscles until I was comforted enough to fall asleep.  How in the world did petroleum jelly ease my aching muscles? Furthermore, how did my parents devise the idea that Vaseline, meant for skin care, would be the cure to my aching muscles? Genius.  Truly, I could have been the poster child for Vaseline well into my twenties thanks to its healing properties. 

Surely, this was the placebo effect.  I believed with my whole seven-year-old heart that the cure for my scrawny aching legs was that salve applied by my parents’ hands.  Was it only that I believed that it worked? Or was there something, also, in the tender care of my loving parents who administered it?  Was it not, also, that I believed in my parents’ and trusted them to be right, always? Again, how did they manage that? 

I wonder, was the situation of the man born blind similar to my own?  He could no more explain how Jesus’ saliva and dirt reversed his blindness than I can explain how the aches were eased in my legs.  But, what the man could say was, “I had an ailment, this man touched me and sent me to the pools.  I listened to him and now I am cured.”  Maybe it was the saliva of Jesus that healed him.  Maybe it was the tender administrations of Jesus.  Maybe it was the simple fact that someone stopped and took notice of his plight. Maybe his faith made him well.  Whatever the mechanics of that miracle, we can take away the power of his words: “Lord, I believe.”