First of all, the children's favorite Bible story is Jonah and the big fish. I am not entirely sure why - perhaps because it involves a giant fish? Anything with giant fish swallowing people is interesting to small children, I guess. Anyway, they request Jonah every single day, and so we all have it memorized by now. There are a lot of Jonah references in our house.
Secondly, Joseph is rather prone to bad dreams. He is our most sensitive child with a very overactive imagination, so we have to be really careful about what movies he watches and books he reads. He's a lot like me in that respect, actually. He is also quite melodramatic. (That he gets from Robert. ;-) okay, probably not) Almost daily he describes his "bad dreams" to me in graphic detail, and they almost all involve somebody dying in some dreadful manner. I'm sure that some of them he actually dreamed, but I think a lot of them are things he's cooked up in his imagination and just SAYS (and maybe even thinks) he's dreamed. I listen to them all patiently and try to be sympathetic, and then encourage him to pray and ask God to give him good thoughts and good dreams, and encourage him that he doesn't have to be afraid because Jesus is always with him. So now you're caught up.
Today Joseph was describing to me his latest "bad dream," which involved us being on a boat and me falling overboard and getting eaten by a shark. (Great, now I'm going to have nightmares about that! There is a reason I've never watched Jaws.) Trying to reassure him, I suggested that maybe I was just swallowed by the shark, like Jonah was by the whale, and it spat me out onto shore after 3 days.
Well, Joseph was way too smart to buy that explanation - he has entirely too much knowledge of piscine anatomy. "No," he insisted, "because you were digested."
Oh. Well, so much for that attempt to divert him. "Well, Joseph, you don't have to worry," I said. "My soul went to heaven to be with Jesus." (Along with Jonah, that is one of the other theological discussions we have most often. He is apt to mention "when he grows up, Mom will die and go to heaven" in daily conversation, but really, it's not as morbid as it sounds. He's just trying to figure out this idea of "life after death" - kind of like we all are!) So I thought this would be a good opportunity to bring up that death isn't the end. Unfortunately that didn't work either.
"NO!" he wailed at the top of his lungs, "because your SOUL was digested TOO!"
Well, I confess, at this point I burst into laughter and was totally unable to reassure him because I was too busy rolling on the floor. Oh man, I laughed so hard, my sides ached. Poor Joseph. He's never going to tell me one of his nightmares again.
I wonder if this is a theory the Catholic church has ever explored? I know they dug up the bones of John Wycliffe and burned them and scattered the ashes in the river so he couldn't be resurrected. I'm pretty sure you can't be resurrected if your soul has been digested, either.
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