Mousey Tales

by Donna Poole

There she was, just a tiny field mouse curled up in a bag in the garden. Kimmee found her and told us the mouse was grieving the loss of her family, and everything in the bag smelled like her loved ones and was making her life intolerable.

“Let’s put this in the bag.” John pulled out of his pocket a facemask he’d worn to the doctor. “It will smell different to the mouse and cover the old scents. She can build a new nest in the mask and be happy again.”

Kimmee nodded. “Okay, Dad. We could try that.”

I objected. “Honey, the poor mouse will think she lives in a hospital, and what kind of life is that? She’ll be even more miserable than she is now!”

Then I woke up.

The dream reminded me of another mouse tale. When I was younger, and our kids were small I was push mowing our yard. A scurrying movement caught my attention, and I stopped the small mower just in time. A trembling mouse stood on her back legs looking at me, front paws folded like she was praying. Her whiskers and the rest of her trembled in fright. Why, I wondered, wasn’t she running away?

Then I saw them, tiny, pink, hairless mouse babies. I called the kids to come see them. Even with the kids crowding close Mama mouse stood there, looking at us. Then she picked up one baby by the back of its neck, the way a mother cat carries a kitten, and ran off with it.

“Will she come back?” one of the kids asked.

“I bet she will. Let’s watch and see.”

A few minutes passed, and Mama mouse, still shaking with fear, came back for baby number two. I think there were five babies. It took her awhile to move them all, but Mama mouse saved every pink baby from us giant people and the monster mower. A mother’s love turned her mousey heart into a lion.

John and I both are rather mousey, at least regarding confrontation. We’d rather walk away. Though, when the occasion calls for firmness, we have what it takes, or rather, God gives it to us.

Mess with our kids and these two mice become lions.

When Johnnie and Danny were in grade school, two school bullies, we’ll call them “Billy” and “Larry” picked on them mercilessly. One day, John had all he could take.

He did something no parent could get away with now. He went to school when the boys were in gym class.

“May I help you, Pastor Poole?” the gym teacher asked.

“I need to talk to Billy and Larry,” John said.

The teacher sent the two boys to the rear of the gym, where they stood, backs against the wall.

“My boys are a lot smaller than you, aren’t they?” John asked.

Billy and Larry looked at each other. They knew exactly where this was going. They nodded.

“And I’m a lot bigger than you, right?” John asked.

More nods.

“I’ll tell you what. The next time you feel like picking a fight with someone, you call me. I’ll come right over.”

“Everything okay back there, Pastor Poole?” the gym teacher called.

“It is now,” John replied. “You can have these two back.”

Our sons were embarrassed because their dad went to school to fight their battles, but it worked.   

Until brain surgery left me without a filter—you know—that thing that says, “Stop! Don’t say it,” I was terribly shy. I never confronted anyone about anything, especially not at church, until that one day. When I needed my lion’s heart, I found it, just like the little mouse in our yard.

Kimmee was about five years old when one of her little friends got into trouble with her mother and told her Kimmee had done it. Kimmee told the woman she hadn’t done it.

I entered the room just in time to hear the end of the conversation, or rather, just in time to end it. The woman was screaming at Kimmee, calling her a liar. Kimmee’s eyes were huge, and she was shaking so hard she could barely stand.

“Whoa!” I pushed myself between the two of them. “You do not ever, ever scream at my daughter!”

She muttered something and stomped off. I expected to hear more about it later, but I never did.

When our kids are grown, they no longer need our protection, or do they?

After our four were adults, I kept having the same nightmare. They were all little again, and I could see a tornado coming across the fields. I’d get one child safely in the basement, and just as I was taking two more down, that one would laugh, run by me, and escape outside. The kids made it into a game and ignored my warnings.

One day I told our daughter-in-law, Mindy, about the dream.

“I know why you’re dreaming that,” she said. “You’re afraid you can’t protect them anymore now that all of them are grown up.”

Everyone should have a Mindy. She’s pretty wonderful and quite wise.  Her dream interpretation must have been right because I never had that nightmare again.

It’s an illusion, isn’t it, thinking we can keep our kids safe no matter what age they are? Like Mama mouse, we’ll grow a lion’s heart and risk anything to try to protect them, but so much of life is beyond our control. We couldn’t protect any of ours from the near-death experiences and accidents they had. Nor could we protect them from sorrow. And we still can’t, no matter how lion-like our mousey hearts grow.

What can we do for our family and friends, for all our loved ones? We can take them to God, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Oh God, who mends and uses broken things,

I don’t beg you spare my beloved the pain life brings.

I know they must travel a broken road,

Because that’s the only path there is, or so I’m told.

May tears show them the shortness of time.

Please, teach them to trust when life has no reason or rhyme.

Let heartaches make them tender to the weak

And more careful of any scornful word they might speak.

Please, give their hearts overflowing love to share,

Let nothing unloving feel comfortable there.

Hold them closely on these backroads of life,

And give them joy for the journey despite the strife.

I can’t always be here when things get tough,

But I know you’ll always be for them more than enough.

When life starts to crumble and fall apart,

Give them lion-like courage from your own strong heart.

If they must break, hold them, mend them, use them.

Keep on loving this hurting world through them.