I was seven years old and spending a day with my grandmother.  She gave me a nickel.  It was the largest amount of money ever placed in my grubby little paw.  Had I been at home, Mother would have made me get my piggy bank and promptly deposit this princely gift into Monsieur Swine's slot.  But away from mother's vigilance, I played with the nickel.  I spun it, set it on its edge, and tried flipping it in the air the way my uncles did.  It was my first venture into the delights of avarice. 

I knew you needed a nickel to buy a banana Popsicle and a towering ice cream cone (it was 1946).  I knew the grumpy old man at the newspaper stand demanded a nickel for two Tootsie Rolls (twice the size of the ones you get nowadays for fifty cents).  My nickel would purchase ten, two-for-a penny lollipops.  Oh, yes, I knew all about nickels.  My five year old mind reveled in a wanton gateway to confectionery luxuries.
 
Little did I know that my nickel would never buy these delicacies.  Had fear and misery been stock and bonds, my nickel was about to reap an investment that would have been the envy of any stock broker.

As the day wound into a lazy summer afternoon, I grew tired of caressing my nickel.  So I popped it into my mouth.  I reveled in the new sensation of shiny metallic taste clinking against my teeth.  I switched it back and forth from cheek to cheek, scrubbing it with my tongue.  I strolled by Grandmother, cheek bulging with the coin of the realm. 

"Kathy, take that nickel out of your mouth right now.  You might swallow it."

"What would happen then, Grandma?”  I asked.

"Well, you would have to go to the hospital and have the doctors cut your stomach open.  And if I see you with it in your mouth again, I'll take it back."
I promptly poked the nickel into the linty pocket of my cotton overalls.  I knew that Grandmother, not given to repeating orders, would confiscate my booty if I disobeyed.

Grandma laid down her Sunday paper.  “Goodness, I just cannot hold my eyes open I'm going upstairs to take a nap, Kathy. You should take one too."
"Can I sleep on the glider out on the porch?"  I loved nestling among the glider's soft cushions watching people walk by on the street in front of the house. 
 
"I suppose so.  But you stay right there until I come downstairs."
The day was so warm that no one was out walking.  Bored, I took the nickel from my pocket and popped it back into my mouth.  Grandma would never know.  I even discovered a new game.  Laying flat on my back, I balanced the nickel on the end of my tongue, pushing my tongue out as far as I could.  By crossing my eyes I could see the shiny coin as it wobbled on the tip of my tongue. 

It was during the highlight of this acrobatic triumph that the nickel slid off my tongue and down my throat.  I sat up and swallowed.  The pain was awful.  It took three swallows to dislodge the coin.  I could almost hear it clink as it hit my stomach. 

However no sooner had the panic from swallowing the nickel subsided when a worse one replaced it.  Oh, no!  I couldn't tell Grandmother because then the nickel would have to be cut out of my stomach.  That meant hospitals, doctors, smelly ether.  No thank you, please.  After two surgeries, one for tonsils and another for a lengthy orthopedic procedure, nothing would force a return to those reeking halls of torture.  There was no alternative.  I could not—no would not, ever tell.

At home that evening I hardly touched dinner.  The thought of carrots and peas jockeying for position with the nickel discouraged my appetite.  That night I dreamed of surgeons with saber like scalpels poised over my bare tummy.
 
Gloom clouded the following day as I grew more scared.  What if the nickel killed me?  Food now seemed to stick in my throat.  A huge lump seemed to have taken up residence in my throat.  Oh, no, I thought.  It's the nickel trying to come out.  During lunch I felt sick to my stomach and ran into the back yard where I threw up.  Mother came out and held my head as I retched.  Vainly did my eyes try to spot the shiny object of misery in the mess at my feet.  It was nowhere in sight.

Mother thinking I had the flu, sent me to bed to rest.  Every day for two weeks that horrible lump in my throat made me sick to my stomach.  Only now I slipped away to the upstairs bathroom where no one could hear me.  I knew what fate awaited me if mother discovered the truth.

My nights became terror, and my days moderated somewhere around a misty sense of doom.  If a seven year old could come perilously close to clinical depression, I did.

Three weeks after I swallowed the nickel Mom and Dad left for a two?week vacation.  Aunt May came to take care of me. 

Dear sweet natured, gentle voiced Aunt May.  I didn't obey her because I had to, but because I genuinely wanted her approval.  She just made being good easy, and best of all, she read to me.  I loved being read to -- for hours.  Anyone with leather lungs and a cast iron throat was mine.
In the twilight hours, I would snuggle up against her ample chest as her soft voice and chuckles wafted over the top of my head.  For a time I was almost happy again, nearly forgetting the sword that dangled over my life  -- or rather, the scalpel over my stomach.
 
One evening Aunt May read the newspaper to me.  We laughed while oohing and aahing appropriately over the stories.  It made me feel so grown-up having newspaper articles shared with me.  That's what I loved Aunt May, she did things just right.

"Mercy, just listen to this, Kathy," She said. "Why I never!"
It seems a baby had swallowed an open safety pin and had to have emergency surgery.  Suddenly I was all hot and sweaty.  I ran from the room crying; all the weeks of misery welling up and gushing out.

Aunt May caught up with me and gently turned me to her. "Child, whatever is the matter?"  Her kind face took tender hold of my tear filled my eyes.  "Come tell me."

Between chest-heaving sobs, I laid the matter before her, from swallowing the nickel, the lump in my throat, to throwing up.  I withheld nothing.

Aunt May gathered me in her arms and held me close.  "Oh, poor child, how you've suffered these past weeks.  And all for nothing."
For nothing?  Hadn't she heard a word I said?  Didn't she understand that I should be rushed to the hospital and carved asunder forthwith?

She grinned at my open mouthed shock.  "Kathy, that nickel isn't in you anymore.  It went out day after you swallowed it.  You know, when you went to the bathroom.  Everything we put in our mouths comes out in the bathroom, dear."

"But why did the baby have to go to the hospital?" I asked.

"Well, that was different.  The open pin could have poked a hole in his tummy and caused big trouble.  You see your nickel was round and smooth, it just rolled right on through."

Relief upon relief.  Still another question lingered.

"What about the lump I feel in my throat?"

"You were so frightened you made your yourself sick, with that big imagination of yours."

How simple the answer!  I threw my arms around Aunt May's neck and hugged her hard.  With a final laugh, she kissed my cheek and sent me off to bed.

Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream.  Aye, there's the rub.  But there was no rub that night, no dreams of perchance; only the sweet slumber of a relieved soul until the sunlight and warmth of tomorrow would awaken me.

Like children, we often process false information from ignorant sources and draw conclusions that rob us of peace.  We become isolated prisoners of fear or pride.      "If I tell some one what I'm going through," we reason, "I will be written off, or laughed at."  So we add dimensions of terror to our already heavy burden.

In the family of God, we have a wide array of "Aunt Mays" from whom to seek scriptural counsel, encouragement, and holy common sense approaches to our quandaries.

 Proverbs 25:11  "Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances."

Believe me, swallowed pride and fear go down a lot easier than my nickel did!