Solution- Super Glue!

Honeybun is always finding some discarded tidbit to test for edibility, so at first, I didn't panic....not til I noticed that the container she had mangled said, "Super Glue". Perceiving that she was having a little trouble opening her mouth,  I exploded into action. She looked befuddled and one side of her mouth was not quite working. Her lip seemed stuck to her teeth.
"Oh dear Lord," I cried, "Please don't let this be happening!"

I reached in and rocked back and forth the glob stuck to her teeth and on the verge of permanent stuckness to her lower gum. Fortunately it was the superglue that takes a minute to set and I had caught her in time, There was a piece on her lower gum that I left as it was stuck and I knew once she chewed a few  bones it would dislodge. I scraped the rest of her tooth and watched her for the next hour. She must not have ingested any as she seemed to be breathing, and eating just fine.

As Asherel noted, "That would be really ironic, of all dogs for Honeybun to have her mouth glued shut." Asherel is studying "irony" in her Painless Poetry book. How kind of God to give her such a perfect object lesson. Honeybun who lives to eat, being unable to open her mouth would  indeed be ironic. It did hatch a plan in my heart, evil as it may be...... what about super glueing Lucky?  Next time he tries to eat the window sill, just squeeze a little super glue on it first. Hahaha. Ok, so I am not quite embracing the Bible verse where God commands us to leave retribution to Him, proclaiming, "Vengeance is mine."

The Super Glue had not only played the dubiously useful role of gluing Honeybun's mouth shut that day. I had awoken to the shattered, splintered window sill which I had laid suggestively on Arvo's dresser. I hoped in tripping across it, he might find a way to replace it before our holiday guests arrived. But then, the spirit of self-reliance that made our country great seized me.  I gathered the aforementioned super glue, wood filler, sandpaper, paint, and nails. She who made a wooden reindeer out of a fallen tree could surely reconstruct a window sill.

I gathered the splintered pieces and put them together like a puzzle. There were some gaps, but I was not willing to pump Lucky's stomach for them.  First I used the super glue to reconstruct the sill. I only stuck my finger semipermanently to the sill once. Then I slid it in place and superglued some more, and for good measure, taped it to be sure it stayed in the proper alignment. Then I used massive amounts of wood filler and squeezed it in the gaps and toothmarks.  Mind you there were more gaps and toothmarks than intact wood so this was no small feat. Three hours later, I removed the tape. It held! I sanded, and then painted, and since the lovely clean white sill now made the rest of the window look dingy, I painted the whole window trim. And then of course the second window needed to be painted. By then, it was time for me to teach my Trebuchet class so I had to clean my paintbrush and hope I hadn't glued the window shut.

When Arvo came home, he asked me where I had found the new window sill. Victory!!!!!

So I got a double lesson from God yesterday and it was a clear one. Most things have a proper and wondrous use or a corrupted, and evil use. It is not the thing that is good or evil... it is how we use it. God speaks eloquently of that in regards to the tongue. The tongue can proclaim love one moment, or spew venom and hatred in the other. It can build others up with encouraging words, or it can mangle and despair with discouraging words.  Money can be used for selfish means, or it can be used to help a hurting and desperate world.  Time can be spent in self indulgence... or in reaching out to a child, or an old man that needs a listening ear to whom he can cry out his pain.  Christmas can be used as a massive greedy gift grab, or it can be used to help us remember that Jesus was born to die for us, and to save us from our sin...and from super-gluing sweet dogs' mouths shut. ( well, ok, maybe not for exactly that last one....) This is just a short list.

I threw out the chewed up super glue tube, but I thought of all the times I wished I had super glued my mouth shut that day alone!  I praised God who had not taken the lesson to its painful extreme, and then prayed that I had learned enough that He might never have to.

1 Corinthhians 10:23
 ²³ “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. ²⁴ No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.