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I just took Benedryl so we’ll see how things go.

For some reason I am itchy right now. And I’m not talking about “I want to go to Boston” itchy. I’m not talking about “I just want to graduate” itchy. I’m literally. Itchy. My scalp and neck and back and chest and armpits. Even my eyelids. They’re

so

itchy.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

But I’ve been thinking about the figurative itches we get. Boston came on my ipod today and I almost packed my bags. I’m itching to see how things play out. And it is so tempting to scratch.

But if you didn’t know, I’m going to fill you in on itchiness because I feel fairly adequate enough to explain this to you due to multiple overreactions to bug bites in the past: It never helps to scratch. It may feel good for awhile. It may even go away for awhile. But it comes roaring and flaring back, and we are stuck with our bottle of calamine lotion and desperate prayers. Scratching makes the affected area so much worse and, ironically, more itchy. We want to do it ourselves, though. It is so easy…so easy…to just scratch it.

Two close friends have dealt with poison ivy and I’ve watched them. It is so hard not to scratch. And calamine lotion may help for a little bit. The Benedryl may put us to sleep so we aren’t focusing on it, and ice may numb it, but really..all we can really do is wait. The bug bite will fade. The poison ivy will heal. And whatever itchiness is attacking the top fourth of my body will go away.

It better freaking go away.

So what do we do now?

Well, we try not to scratch. Which is much harder than it sounds. We distract ourselves, think of more important things, and we don’t focus on how itchy we really are. And we let it run its course. We wait. And we do other things while we are waiting.

And it’s not that bad to take Benedryl once in awhile. We gotta get through somehow, right?

I just want to end with this: other than being with Jesus, the thing I’m most excited for about heaven is definitely the fact that there will be no such thing as itchiness.

Amen and amen.

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