"It's a thrilling tale, I wish to do it justice."

That quote may not jump out at you but it sort of hits home for all that my Mom is going through right now with her hand. If anyone is a Harry Potter fan then you'll start to figure out where I am headed. Especially since Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opened last Wednesday. I saw it at midnight on the 14th and let me tell you that it's much harder to wake up for work the next day after a 3 hour movie.

But I digress...If you have any of Harry Potter knowledge then this will simply be a review, if you are completely in the dark then I'll try to give you the short synopsis. In book six we find Harry and his friends on the edge of a raging war between good and evil. Dumbledore is oddly absent for most of book five and when he returns his hand is blackened and withered. Harry asks Dumbledore five different times what happened to his sickly, injured hand. Most of Dumbledore's responses are simply to brush the question aside as there are more important matters to discuss. (In the movie we never really hear the answer but pick up book six to hear part of the tale!)

Needless to say finally Dumbledore tells a brief story. Some background knowledge is necessary for all you Muggles who have not yet read the series but in order to destroy Voldermort (the most evil wizard of all) we have to find all 7 Horcrux that contain a piece of his soul. In book two Harry found and destroyed one without knowing and now in book six Dumbledore found another- a ring! The passage can be found on page 503 and is as follows:

"You are forgetting...you have already destroyed one of them. And I have destroyed another."
"You have?" said Harry eagerly.
"Yes, indeed," said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burned-looking hand. "The ring, Harry. Marvolo's ring. And a terrible curse there was upon it too. Had it not been -- forgive me the lack of seemly modesty -- for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort's soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux."

I think the part that I enjoy and relate too currently is - "However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldermort's soul."
If we stretch this analogy to my Mom's own hand I would say the same thing-"However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for the potential of possibly losing her or my Dad for good."

Sometimes I get too overwhelmed with the negatives from this occurrence in my life but to then see that the accident could have potentially taken my parents away from me for good then I say we came out okay if we are dealing with a permanently withered hand. Of course it's not my hand it's hers and it's her decision whether or not she wants to have surgery but I love that withered hand if it's a reminder that she escaped something much worse!

I think the Bible even speaks of this a little too:
1 Corinthians 15:54-55 (New International Version)
54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."[a]
55"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"[b]


And who said Harry Potter didn't have a spiritual element? Huh? That's what I thought naysayers!

Dumbledore's hand is cut off in this photo but you get the idea-see the movie if you are still struggling for a visual.