The Milk Amplifier

I am pretty sure that I was born with milk-hating genes. I have never, ever liked milk. My brother loved it, but not me. I don’t like the taste of it or how it clogs up my throat. Yuck. Daddy came from a long line of milk-loving folks and he believed that children needed milk, so he insisted that I drink it. There was lots of drama at supper time at our house. Sitting at that table until I drank my milk was torture. I would finally have to put it back in the refrigerator, get it cold again, hold my nose, and drink it all at once. I still hate milk.

Since milk drinking was considered an essential function of childhood at my house, Mama tried to find a way to make it tolerable. Have you ever heard of Bosco? It has been around since 1928 and originally it was called a “milk amplifier.” I’m not kidding. Bosco is nothing more than chocolate syrup loaded with iron. Anyway, by the time I came along, Bosco had dropped that milk amplifier gimmick and just went with the chocolate syrup sales pitch. They did still insist that it made milk palatable. So, Mama tried it. She bought Bosco and added it to my milk and even though I still didn’t like it, I could get it down. Loved the Bosco. Hated the milk. So you will know, Bosco is still made in New Jersey. It is mostly sold in New York, Florida, Texas, and southern California. But, it is also sold in Europe Asia, and the Middle East. You can even order it on Amazon. Really. Or from Bosco’s website for $2.00 a bottle. I am not kidding about any of this. You should try it if you like chocolate.

Anyway, Mama believed in hanging clothes outside on a clothesline to dry. And Mama did a lot of clothes washing, so there were always lots of clothes to hang out or bring in. We had a neighbor who once told Mama that she either had the cleanest or the dirtiest children in the world. He based that on all the clothes hanging out to dry. One afternoon Mama was making a quick trip to the clothesline to bring in a few towels. She decided to leave us inside because lugging children down a flight of stairs and then back up again would take twice as long as just running to the clothesline and back. Mistake. Bad mistake.

While Mama was gone, my brother and I got into the Bosco. He was going to have chocolate milk and I was going to have straight Bosco. It was a doomed plan from the beginning. We got chairs so we could climb up, stand on the counter top, reach the cabinets, and grab the Bosco. We were squatting on the counter top and squirting Bosco into a glass to make chocolate milk when disaster struck. We missed the glass. And part of the counter top. Bosco ended up all over the counter and on the floor. We used our chairs and climbed down . . . and managed to step in the Bosco every time we moved. We made another bad decision. We decided to clean it up. With towels from the bathroom. So we tracked chocolate footprints all over the kitchen, through the house and into the bathroom. And then we smeared Bosco all over the floor with the help of those towels. About the time we had made the biggest mess we could make in our effort to clean up, Mama came through the door. Oh, boy. The only good thing I can say about the Bosco incident is that no matter what kind of mess we made from that point on, Mama would always say, “Well, at least it isn’t as bad as the Bosco.”

Do you sometimes try to fix things in your life and end up making a mess? I do. And I don’t learn quickly, because I just keep on doing it. God must look at me sometimes and think, “Ok, now, we are approaching Bosco proportions so be careful.” All He really wants us to do is depend on Him. I struggle. I want to depend on Him, but I seem to see a way to hurry things along, so I just handle it myself. The results are usually about what you would expect. Sometimes, though, there is no way for me to do anything else except lean on Him. That’s where I am right now - depending on Him to handle everything. It’s a good feeling to know that He is on duty. One way or another, I’m going to learn this lesson.

I think that chemotherapy and radiation may be my new measuring stick for unpleasantness. Mama had Bosco and I have cancer treatment. I’m pretty sure cancer treatment trumps Bosco.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10