Positive Daily Inspiration – April 24, 2023 – When Life Starts to Smell

“Oh, to be safe under the shelter of Thy wings.”
Psalms 61:4

“It was a summer night in the mid-1990s. I was standing on the front porch with my son. It was a perfect night, perfect temperature. I had my arm around my son, and we were looking out over the yard at the full moon.

“Across the driveway in the meadow on the other side of the yard there was a family of skunks. I said to Jonathan, ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ They were walking across the meadow. We took out our binoculars and we looked at the skunks.

Then for some reason I turned around and I noticed my dog was outside. My dog “Bentley” was an overly friendly golden retriever, who lived for one thing, making new friends. I prayed an instant prayer that he wouldn’t see the skunks. Too late, he spotted them; I saw his whole expression change. He got a big smile on his face, and he thought, ‘New friends to play with.’ He was off chasing four surprised skunks who were not at all pleased to make the acquaintance of a 105-pound- bouncing-fur-ball lunging toward them.

“I saw it happen as if in slow motion. All four skunks raised their tails in unison. We heard from the front porch our dog yelp and whine. We saw a gaseous cloud arise like an atomic blast and encircle my dog. There was a slight breeze blowing from the direction of the skunks to our home. Within moments a strange smell encircled our entire house. It was so powerful I cannot even describe to you in this Positive Daily Inspiration how powerful it was except my son was crying. He said, ‘Daddy, make it stop.’

“I went into the kitchen to get my can of professional strength Lysol. When I was in the kitchen looking under the cupboard for the Lysol, my son let the dog in the house. The dog was about as low in spirit as a living creature could be. The dog was very embarrassed and so he ran for his hiding place under the bed in the back bedroom. This is my daughter Jennifer’s room.

She was away for the week at a church conference. I thought OK, once he squeezes under the bed, there is no removing him. I closed the door to her room, and I thought I would fumigate later before she gets back home on Sunday.

“My son and I went to bed. About two hours later, about midnight, a storm blew in. We heard the hard rain and the thunderstorm. My dog was very afraid of thunder. He was crying in the back bedroom, and I felt so sorry for him, but there was nothing I could do. I could not let him out. So, we went back to sleep. In the middle of the night, I awoke because I started to smell that overwhelming smell again. I turned on the light and in the middle of my king sized bed right beside me was the dog. I pulled the dog outside and put him on the front screened in porch because the thunderstorm had passed by this time. I thought that if he were on the front porch he would air out.

“The next day he had not aired out. As a matter of fact, the smell did not age well at all. I went to work the next day and I asked some of my friends what I should do. Several people who were there said to bathe him in tomato juice. I just stared at them. I thought, ‘Oh, that will be fun – bathing this 105-pound-fur-ball in tomato juice.’

“They said, ‘Well, you had better go to the wholesale club and buy gallons and gallons of tomato juice.’

“Those of you that have big dogs know what I’m talking about. That dog would have shaken so much that the whole yard would have looked like spaghetti. Tomato sauce would be over the dried yellow grass, while miraculously the dog would stay dry.

“I called the Vet, and I got a product called ‘Skunk Out.’ I poured it all over him, and I was so thankful it wasn’t tomato juice. When he got wet, it was just as I predicted, he shook, and his fur shed off all fluid. I had a lot more Skunk Out on me than he had on him. I literally had it on the back of my eyeballs. I washed the sheets, and I shampooed the entire carpeting in my house, I even repainted one room.”

We never did fully get the smell out of the back room. The dog hid under the bed of my daughter during the time Jennifer was at the church conference. Her room had a strange aroma around it. When she returned, she said, “Dad, there’s a strange smell in my backroom.” Jonathan and I just shrugged our shoulders acting like we did not know what the world it could be. To this day, I do not think she knows the full story.

Life is funny. Everything can be going well and in a second’s time you meet one of “life’s skunks.” It is OK as long as you recover, but if you don’t recover, if you hang on to the hurt, you become sick.

There’s a song from an old Broadway play that says, “I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair.” Sometimes, we have to wash the thoughts in our mind. We think nothing of taking a shower everyday cleansing away the old, but it is in the mental cleaning that we find lasting effects.

Only God can fully cleanse away life’s smells.

Ask God for help.

POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER:
Dear God, when things are not going right, I will pray for Divine order, and I thank You for your help that is always available to me.

Amen.

POSITIVE DAILY AFFIRMATION:
I am kept in perfect peace because my mind is stayed on God.

POSITIVE DAILY QUOTE:
“Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on; ’twas not given for thee alone. Pass it on. Let it travel down the years. Let it wipe another’s tears, till in heaven the deed appears. Pass it on.”
Henry Burton

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