The Up Side of Upchuck 

  

He heard the sound of the trumpet, 

and took not warning; 

his blood shall be upon him. 

But he that taketh warning 

shall deliver his soul. 

                                    -- Ezekiel 33:5 

              

Last weekend, I had the Sunday paper on my lap, reading it to my Beloved as he drove. We were hauling the boat to a lake a few hours away for a late-summer day of fun in the sun. 

  

I'd skipped breakfast getting ready, and instead drank three cups of strong, leftover coffee, an acid download into my craw.  

  

The northern Iowa interstate was extra bumpy with detours, twists and turns. 

  

The morning sun was intense. 

  

I knew better than to read in the car.  

  

It was inevitable: all that coffee started to re-percolate and swirl around. There was a Rumble in the Bronx. All of a sudden . . .  

  

LOOK OUT!!!!!! SHE'S GONNA BLOW!!!!!! 

  

I threw up all that coffee into the newspaper in my lap. Ewwww!!!!! 

  

Now, 364 days a year, this would have been no problem. But THAT morning's paper contained the long-awaited and much-enjoyed college football preview section . . . including everything there was to know about my Beloved's beloved Cornhusker football team. 

  

It was ruined. He sighed. We found a dumpster. I chewed gum. 

  

At least, I mused, there's an up side to upchuck: 

  

It certainly has a way of getting your attention. It's a strong warning not to do the things that you know will make you sick. Wish there were more warnings like it in our world today. 

  

            Upchuck has played a unique role in my past. Let it be duly noted that THOUSANDS of days in my life have passed without a single upchuck incident. But my family has recorded in minutia the few occasions in which I have, well, bubbled over: 

  

• The time my brother and I ate a whole bag of those truly gross spongy orange circus peanut candies in the first five minutes of a 12-hour car trip. We were hauling our boat home from northern Minnesota. He and I had to ride backwards in the station wagon - the price of low seniority in the family. Within minutes, I became car sick. I yelled to my dad to lower the huge rear window of the station wagon, which took an excruciatingly long time. And then I upchucked . . . all over the bow of the white boat just inches behind the car. Ewwww! So then my brother and I had to look at upchucked orange circus peanut candy alllll the way home.

  

• Then there was the time I had to sleep in a tiny hammock in a 10-foot wide trailer on a family trip to the West Coast. Just turning over in the hammock was enough to trigger my motion sickness. I leaned over and upchucked . . . alllll over my sleeping, unsuspecting sister in the bunk below. Are you getting the picture, that I was not the most popular travel mate in the world?

  

• A third example was the time the same patient, though wary, sister and I were riding in the back seat of Grandpa's car. Grammie sat between us so we wouldn't fight. We were wearing our matching middy blouses, the only clean clothes we had left after a week's vacation with the grandparents. But, as usual, I got car sick. Did I simply roll down the window and harmlessly unload outside the car? Nooooo. I leaned in, toward my darling Grammie in the middle of the car for comfort . . . and threw up alllll over my SISTER. My middy blouse remained sparkling clean; hers was a mess. We had to stop at a laundromat to wash it before we could continue home.

  

All of these alerts were a clarion call to my family: never, EVER go on a trip with the Upchuck Queen. 

  

But let it be noted that, in my adult years, my motion sickness has pretty much gone away. Except for a little morning sickness here and a little flu bug there, I've remained pretty much upchuck-free for decades . . . 

  

. . . EXCEPT . . .  

  

. . . this one really weird time that's the most memorable upchuck experience of them all. 

  

See, right after I got born again and gave my life to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I wanted to do a lot of good deeds for people out of the joy that I was feeling. So I signed up to be the gardener at our daughters' school. 

  

The students and I put in a prairie garden, an alphabet garden, a scent garden, and a long row of day lilies and iris where previously there had been plain dirt and grass.  

  

Always one to multi-task, I would listen to Christian radio on my geeky headphones whenever I would go over to school to prep the garden space, or weed it once it got going. Radio became my form of continuing religious education. As a brand-new Christian, I hung on every word of a number of radio preachers, and gradually "girled up" on my Bible knowhow. 

  

Well, one morning when I was out there with my headphones, there was an expert on the radio talking about the many new translations of the Bible. He alleged that several of them changed the meaning of several important passages significantly in their attempt to be simpler and more relevant for the reader of today. They threw out the baby with the bath water, rhetorically speaking. In this case, it was THE baby - Jesus. 

  

Now, my Bible is, and was, a King James Version. I was relieved to hear this expert say that the KJV is truest to the actual original text of the 15 or so Bible translations on the market today. He read verse after verse in the King James vs. how the same verse read in some of the newer versions, and it sure did appear that he was right. 

  

Some of the newer translations minimize the deity and uniqueness of Christ, negate the many direct connections between His life and Old Testament predictions about the coming Messiah, and demote Him to more of a "Presence" than the Person He is. The expert said the over-tweaked new translations were dumbing down Christians, and setting the stage for future generations to fall prey to deceptions and misunderstandings, to the point where they would actually miss knowing the real Christ and instead go for wacky New Age belief systems instead. 

  

I had never heard a word about this before, ever. So I was pretty shocked. I was on my knees, gardening, and remember silently asking God if there was anything to this. 

  

I stood up . . . 

  

. . . AND UPCHUCK CAME INTO MY MOUTH!!!!! 

  

Whoa! 

  

Yuck! 

  

I hadn't had three cups of black coffee. I wasn't riding in a car. I didn't feel sick. But there was no denying the bad taste in my mouth. 

  

It was one of those "coincidences" in life that you just can't dismiss. The Lord was giving me an unforgettable confirmation that these New Age translations were, indeed, like spiritual upchuck. If you consume them, they will make you spiritually sick. 

  

Stay the heck away! 

  

With my history as the Upchuck Queen, it certainly made the experience . . . memorable. To somebody else, it might not have registered at all. For me, it was powerful. This is an example of what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When you let your God live inside yourself, that's about as personal as you can get. 

  

Anyway, as a result, I've stuck with my King James Version ever since. I always suggest it to people looking to buy a Bible, without going in to the whole upchuck story, as that would be a classic case of TMI - Too Much Information. I love my KJV and believe I'm getting the pure, unadulterated Word - the right stuff. 

  

However, my family is still wary of traveling with me. They have stocked up on emergency plastic ponchos just in case. 

  

But I just marvel at the way our Lord weaves every detail of our lives together . . . . the good, the bad, the ugly, and even the upchuck . . . using countless things to teach us and love us, individually and uniquely . . . always looking out for our eternal good. †