I for one hate needles. They are mean, bad and ugly.

Recently, I went on a 1.5 hour drive down to St. Tammany Hospital in Covington, Louisiana, to visit a young mother in our church who has been there for 22 days and counting.

Catrina Michel resides in a hospital more than her home since we came to know her three years ago. Most of her 34 years have been filled with painful stings of needles because she is a victim of diabetes. This dreaded malady has brought a never-ending debacle of hurt into her life.

Weighing only 80 something pounds now, she is a frail and distraught young woman as she has become a human pin cushion.

It has been a one step forward, two steps backward scenario for the Michels. Next only to cancer, there is no other disease that riddles the human body with so much pain and misery than this one.

Upon entering her room, I was greeted by her moans and her facial expressions of intense pain as she lay in a fetal position. My grandmother died from diabetes, and I have lost count of the friends and relatives that struggled with and eventually lost out to the stings of this dreaded and hated disease.

The minute secretions of insulin from our pancreas are extremely vital to our wellbeing, and if we don’t receive just the right amount our whole body is affected.

Thus, in the more aggressive stages of diabetes as Catrina the injections only increase is to substitute the failing pancreas.

Added to this latest bout and round in a hospital, her lung was filling up with fluid so much the doctor attempted to drain off the fluid by inserting a tube through her back and rib cage and punctured it.

More pain and hurt from yet another needle.

I could not bear her cries, and not long after prayer and a visit with her husband, Bro. Mike, I left.

She was basically put in this room to die and no further treatments given for a couple days, but she has begun to respond without medicine. Please pray for her that God’s will be done and one way or the other the nasty stings of life end.

They are many, and they come from varied sources these stings of life. My little wife only has to step outside and immediately she is attacked by flying insects that are attracted to her skin. Mosquitos, gnats and other buzzing pests like heat seeking missiles head her way once she exits the safety of the house.

My little girl bears the red bumps still from the ant bites on her little feet she received last week because young and old we are all subject to the nasty stings of life.

Something is always trying to sting us and hurt us.

Every year there is yet another strain of mosquito virus to be discovered, and this year it’s called Zika. Wasps, yellow jackets, bumble bees, hornets — the winged assailants are everywhere.

Added to this list of perpetrators of hurt from nature are spiders, ants, etc. waiting to take a bite out of us.

Snakes are crawling everywhere now and upon getting out of my car yesterday here under the carport there lay a small one that the neighbor’s cat had wounded and left.

The human skin seems to attract the never ending nasty stings of life — be it from hypodermic needles to the fangs and stingers of nature.

Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of stings (trouble).

Thus, the equation:

Human skin = needles and stingers.

Of course it all can be traced back to our original parents in the garden and the curse they received for us all in their fall. No matter how you try to escape, you have a needle/stinger coming your way soon.

I can remember the first injection I had as a little boy in the first grade. It was a polio shot, and I still cringe thinking about it, along with the smallpox one that left a little round scar.

I can also remember the first sting from an insect, and it was from a bumble bee as I ran barefooted in the pasture of my sister’s dairy farm.

Both injections hurt like the devil, but there have been many more since. And, they will continue until I breathe no more.

But, take heart fellow suffer, we have a body coming with skin that will not attract the needles and stingers of this present life. No more hospitals and injections. No more pests — be it an IRS audit or a bumble bee.

I’ll have a new body, praise the Lord. I’ll have a new life.

Then, I’ll be wrapped in anti-sting skin, but for now…..ouch.

I pray your day be one without an ouch.

God bless you and God bless America.

Mike Dykes is a pastor and story teller. He can be reached at angelsmannow@yahoo.com.