The Turquoise Pen

Healed

Noël R. King

Eileen wondered if she had been healed.

“Hallelujah!” she shouted dramatically, just to see how it felt.

Ouch.

“I am NOT healed!” she shouted, louder still.

“That feels much more true,” she thought sadly to herself.

She could no longer remember now what it was that needed to be healed. Her mind, perhaps?

Saints above! How in the world had she ever allowed herself to get to this point—her thoughts so stuffed with fog and woe?

Well, she didn’t know, but at least there was just enough room in there to let a bowling thought sneak through beside her tight, gray other thoughts.

Yes! That is what she’d do.

A good long game of bowling always made her feel marvy, really on top of the world, and she could surely use that kind of feeling right about now.

Post-haste, she called her friend Martha, and off they went.

“This is more like it,” she said, once they got their bowling shoes on.

“What?” said Martha.

“I said, ‘This is more like it,’” she said.

“Oh,” said Martha.

All went well then until about round three, when Eileen’s finger started to hurt and all her anxious thoughts came crashing back again.

Except . . .

“Maybe my finger used to be broken, and now it’s healed!” she exclaimed with renewed hope to Martha, who stared at her blankly.

“Huh?” said Martha.

“Oh, never mind,” said Eileen. “I think I am going to bowl a strike this time.”

And she did.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, Scottsville, Virginia, reports on strange and wonderful or worrisome things, including whether fingers are healed.