Today at the church service, one of the girls in the youth group started to hiccup. I felt sorry for her because I know how embarrassing it can be to hiccup in public and not be able to stop it. I started to think about the longest hiccups that I have dealt with in my life. Hiccups can make you feel helpless because it is an involuntary response to something going on inside of your body.
Some hard situations in life remind me of how you feel when you have the hiccups. You didn't ask for them. You don't want them. You didn't do anything to cause them. You feel forced to respond in a particular way, and you seem to have no real remedy unless the situation goes away on its own. Sure, you can try holding your breath, breathing into a bag, swallowing, drinking a glass of water or eating sugar, but these "remedies" do not always work. Sometimes you just have to wait for the hiccups to go away. We all face challenges in life that are beyond our control. But just like the body comes to the rescue and normally gets rid of the hiccups in a few minutes, God can provide the remedy to your problem.
Just in case you ever thought that you had a long hiccup, consider the life of Charles Osborne. According to the Guinness book of world records, Osborne hiccupped for 68 years from 1922-1990. He started hiccupping while attempting to weigh a pig before slaughtering it. He was never able to find a cure and just adjusted to deal with constant hiccups. Osborne lived a normal life. He had two wives and fathered eight children.
During the first few decades, he hiccupped up to 40 times a minute, slowing to 20 a minute in later years. He had an estimated 430 million hiccup spasms in his life. Looking at Osborne's life makes me thankful that my hiccup attacks have only lasted a couple of minutes at the most. I guess you can always find someone who has had it way, way worse.
