If you know my wonderful wife, Dayle, you have probably seen her with a bandage on one or more of her fingers. For 12 years she has suffered from contact dermatitis. One of the main culprits is soap. All this time she has had to do dishes and household cleaning wearing carefully chosen gloves. She can only use certain shampoos and we have to keep special soaps at all the sinks in the house. After seeing the dermatologist for the nth time, she would just about get it cleared up and something would cause it to come back. Her skin would crack and bleed, or it would become so thin that anything would break it.

To make matters worse, many kinds of gloves cause a similar reaction as the soaps. Fortunately, we discovered nitrile gloves. So if she was not wearing bandages, then she was wearing purple gloves. Sometimes even that was not enough, so she would be wearing cotton or silk gloves inside the nitrile gloves. Cleaning up and packing dusty things also cause outbreaks, and we do a lot of that.

When we came to stay on the JAARS Center for a few months, Dayle asked a friend here to show her a bulk supply store. One place they visited was Earth Fair, an up-scale supermarket specializing in natural and organic products. We like it because they have the best price on bulk almonds and walnuts, as well as grains. While shopping there Dayle saw a natural dish soap made with real lavender and coconut oil surfactants. Always on the lookout for something less irritating to her hands, she got a bottle. It turned out to be very good dish soap. Better, it did not cause contact dermatitis. But it had even more in store. The more Dayle used it, the better her hands got until they were completely healed! Now we put it in the soap dispensers at every sink!

I saw our being at the JAARS Center for several months as a necessary interruption in our lives. I should have had a bit more faith. It has been great being here for a lot of reasons, but finding the solution to Dayle’s contact dermatitis is right near the top of the list. We can even order the dish soap on the internet, so we will have it in Oregon and we will be having some sent to Africa when we go back, where the soaps tend to be very unfriendly to Dayle’s hands.

God is so good to us, putting a healing blessing in an “interruption”. Probably you have had that experience, too. We’d love to hear about it.

PS: The dish soap is called Lavender Ultra Dishmate and it is made by Earth Friendly Products. It comes in several varieties. The one with natural lavender is the one that healed Dayle’s hands.