Those Forbidden Wants

To want something may be the first response of the human being. The moment a baby is born it cries. Is that crying because of pain, fear or is it because of some need or desire; something he wanted? Wants can certainly get a person in trouble if they are something he shouldn’t have.  Wants aren’t necessarily bad if they are truly something we need and should have. But wants that a people have for something that doesn’t belong to them are not good. In the Bible those kinds of wants are called sin if we proceed to take them. A child wants another child’s toy. Someone wants another’s money. A student wants his classmates answer when taking an exam. A man wants another man’s wife, or a woman wants a friend’s husband. To act by taking these things away from the rightful owner is sin.

My first memory of wanting and taking something that I was told I couldn’t have was when I was 41/2 years old right after my baby brother was born. His baby bed was in my parent’s bedroom. Attached to the head of the bed was a little mobile with little dangly things hanging down for him to watch. That was not what I wanted. I wanted the suction cup which had been stuck on the headboard to hold the mobile in place. I was amazed at how you could pull it off and stick it back on, and I wanted to play with it. When my mom was first attaching it she let me stick it on and take it off a few times and then she said, “That’s enough! Don’t bother it any more! This is for Michael.”

I don’t exactly remember my reasoning, but I think it went something like this. “I didn’t want or ask for this kid in the first place. He’s not playing with it. All he does is sleep, and drool all over himself. He’s not even looking at it. So what’s the harm if I play with it?” I waited for the perfect opportunity to satisfy my greatest desire, the thing which would give me what I wanted most, and make me happy.

My mother was in the kitchen, probably cooking supper. Quietly, I sneaked into the bedroom, pushed a chair up beside the baby bed, and climbed up so that I could get to the greatest, toy in the world. I reached through the railing, grabbed that suction cup and yanked it off. Down came those dangly things right on top of Michael. He began screaming! He gave me up, and mom came running in yelling, “JohnPaul, what have you done?” I only had seconds to stick that suction cup onto something. Quickly I tried to think of the best place to stick it, and being the genius that I was I chose the closest available place. I stuck it over my eye. At that moment my mother entered the room, and she was not happy.

Put yourself in my place. If you were only four and a half, had a suction cup stuck to your eye, and your angry mother is glaring at you what would you do? I know, you would run, and that is exactly what I did. My mother was right behind me yelling for me not to run. Running with a pointy object stuck to your eye was not a good thing. But I solved that problem. When in panic mode all wise reasoning tends to fail us. I grabbed the wooden peg on which the suction cup was held, and I pulled with all my might. There was that noise, like when pressure is released from an object, and then there was terrible pain. Do you know what it feels like to almost have your eyeball sucked out of its socket? I do, and it is not pleasant.

My eye looked horrible. I was taken to the doctor, and he said I would be fine. That suctioned eyeball was very red for a few days and just about the whole side of my face was black, purple with a tint of yellow for a while, and after a couple of days the blurriness went away. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson about violating the law of wants, and desires, but I didn’t. In fact over the years I have gotten in worse trouble than almost losing an eye, because I went after those forbidden wants.