Paint and Pixels

Two Completely Unrelated Short Stories From the Life of Naomi

Story #1 The Tale of the Ungrateful Book Return

Today my number one "todo" on my todo list was to return "The Introvert Advantage", a book my husband had checked out, but was fearfully overdo, which was keeping some other introvert out there waiting. I love the library's new personable book return drive-thru machine. When you drive up to it, a little slot, like a mouth, opens up, and guides your returning books into it, then gobbles them up and then politely says "thank you for using the automated return system, goodbye." But today was different. I drove up, the mouth opened, ate my book, and was silent. I waited for a moment to hear it say "thank you" but it never did, and there was a car behind me so I drove off and counted the machine unusually ungrateful. My next stop was the gas station. After inserting the nozzle into my gas tank, and starting the gas flow, I sat in my car to wait. As I was sitting there, I looked down onto the floor of my car and to my horror saw.... "The Introvert Advantage"!!! I gasped! If the library book was right there, what then, did I put into the automatic book return machine?!?!?! And it then dawned on me that the machine was ungrateful because I had done it no favors! I figure out that I had actually given it "The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher", a book that I actually own and haven't finished yet, but keep in the car to read whenever I have to wait somewhere. The next thing on my todo list was to go back to the library and ask the automated machine if I could please have my book back. It complied and I made sure to say "Thank You".

Story #2 The Tragic Virgin Mary Misunderstanding

The other day Chloe (who is 10) was looking at some of the Christmas cards that I had laying out on my counter and commented, "I don't understand why Mary was a virgin. I have just never really understood that."
"Well," I began "You have heard the Christmas story, right? It was a miracle that Mary was a virgin and still got pregnant with Jesus."
"But, then, I thought she was like with Joseph and all?"
"Well, they got married afterwards but they didn't have sex until after Jesus was born."
"They didn't have sex?" she said, with obvious confusion on her face.
"Um, yeah... they didn't have sex. Do you know what a virgin is?" I asked.
"Yeah, it's where a girl is gay, right?"
"NO!" I exclaimed, "that's LESBIAN!!! A virgin is someone who has never had sex!"
Her eyes widened as a lightbulb clearly went off in her brain, "Ohhhhh! I always get virgin and lesbian mixed up. Now I get it."

Virgin. Lesbian. Easily confused. It is tragic that she had gone all these years thinking that Mary was a lesbian. I'm so glad I was there to clear things up for her. God always uses me in the most unexpected ways.