The Smoking Gun

Here's a funny story. A woman smoked cigarettes with real enthusiasm most of her teen and adult years. Amazingly, she was in pretty good shape. Most of this time, she avoided deliberate exercise, healthy food choices, and was not opposed to a drink or two...or three. She was thin and healthy. Most of the year, she sported a nice Florida tan.
Then, after 40 years of smoking, she noticed it was easier to float in the Gulf of Mexico than to swim. When she took her grandson bowling, she only wanted to bowl one frame. Her skin had acquired an interesting texture, not unlike an alligator who had spent too much time on the river bank. The lines around her mouth deepened so much that, unknown to her, liquid could seep out her mouth and decorate her chin. She had continuous head-aches which she chalked up to her sensitive nature until her older sister died of a brain aneurism. Her sister also smoked like a chimney.
But, she reasoned, she was still in good health...just a little short of breath. She salved her conscious by smoking a lite brand of cigarettes and using sun lotion once in awhile. She had these bothersome cramps in her legs sometimes and she'd put on a few pounds. Weird little things started to appear on her skin. Her doctor referred to them as "old age barnacles". Her doctor nagged constantly about using sun protection, quitting smoking and regularly sent her for chest X-rays. They check-ups showed nothing. She thought she was feeling great for a woman of 58 years.
Then something happened. The Lord told her to quit. She never thought of quitting for health reasons. The expense of her 2 pack-a-day habit didn't stop her either. No amount of nagging from family, friends, or health experts ever made an impression on her. But God did. On July 2, 2003 she smoked her last cigarette. She spent the day flying to an Indian Reservation with some other church members. The first week of withdraw was spent with her friends on a mission trip to Arizona. Although she used nicotine patches and chewed nicotine gum, it wasn't as difficult as she had imagined it would be.
Back home in Florida, her conviction grew stronger and, while she craved cigarettes most of the time, she did not smoke. A year later, while at a flea market, her right leg suddenly quite working. Extensive, emergency surgery was performed on her legs two separate times that year. A total of 24 hours in the operation room. It took a year to even partially recover from both procedures. In the meantime, she was diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Diabetes, Type II. She had medical insurance, but the uncovered costs were enormous. She recovered enough from the first surgery and tried to go back to work. It lasted 5 months before she was back in for the second operation. She could not recover enough this time to go back to work. Medical bills and credit card bills mounted as she tried to regain her lost strength. She ended up losing her sparse retirement funds, her home and her sense of independence. She depends heavily on her children’s good will to help with finances...being the burden to them that she’d promised herself she never would be. No longer strong enough to work, she’s waited months for disability approval. Pretty soon she will not be able to afford the apartment she is now renting. She wonders if the Lord is trying to get her down to one suitcase to learn dependence on Him.
She doesn’t waste time being angry with herself over past mistakes. She asks for forgiveness and just tries to do better. She wants everyone who smokes to know that the smoking gun is the cigarettes. They are death to everything you love and care about...from your family, to your health, to your work. It’s as if I (I mean, she) held the habit of smoking up to her head like a revolver when she was 14 years old and laughingly pulled the trigger. It just took 58 years for the bullet it hit it’s target. Not that funny, I guess.