Smelly Rotten Meat Attitude

Oh my word, my house stinks. Words cannot describe the stench. If only the computer screen were “scratch and sniff” – then you, too, could experience the terrible wonder that is my home.

And it’s all my own fault.

I made a beautiful roast. Cooked it in the slow cooker all day. My house smelled FANTASTIC, then. Really, it was so great that I just craved beef all day long. I even ate roast beef for my night snack. Oh, yum.

But the problem was that I threw the meat wrapper into the garbage, along with some meat that had gone bad, and then…. I forgot it there.

Usually I am extremely conscientious about getting the garbage out of the house, but yesterday morning we were in a big rush to leave for the city, and I never thought about that smelly garbage again….

Until we got home late that evening. It was 10:30pm, and the girls were desperate for their beds. It had been a long, busy day, and I was eager to get home. I opened our door…and was greeted with that foul stench. And I knew exactly what had happened. It was the kind of overpowering smell that makes you NOT want to breathe through your mouth, because it feels like you’ll taste the nastiness of it, and you don’t want to breathe through your nose, because then you’ll have to smell it again.

The only option is to stop breathing. And since that’s not really an option, the next best thing is to eliminate the odor as quickly as possible.

I got the garbage out of the house, pronto. I lit candles. I brought in my Easter lily that smells so intensely beautiful that I couldn’t handle having it in the house. Into the house it went.

This morning, things were no better. So I scrubbed my garbage can and threw out everything that had even touched it. And now I’m cooking soup and baking bread (in the bread maker – not quite that hardcore homemaker as to bake it truly from scratch!)

And now we’re starting to get somewhere. My house will smell delicious once more.

Here’s the thing – the whole time I was breathing in stench and frantically battling to save my home, all I could think about was how the sin in my life is like a smelly meat wrapper.

And how annoying – I don’t like it when people have to make a spiritual illustration out of EVERYTHING, and half the time it’s a huge stretch. I like spiritual illustrations that are not far-reaching.

But there you have it. Rotten meat wrappers are like sin.

The reason I thought this is because lately I’ve been struggling with a bad attitude about something. God is not giving me my own way, and once again, I think that I have a difficult situation completely figured out, and I’m slightly annoyed that apparently I don’t get to control the situation, even though I’m obviously very qualified to do so. Whatever.

And then yesterday, once again, I was having trouble writing a blog post. This seems to be happening somewhat frequently. But this time, I knew exactly why I was having trouble. It was because my rotten, stinky attitude was permeating everything, and I was having trouble with praying, reading my Bible, anything that needed to be done with a soft, open heart. I was all clogged up – no inspiration could flow in, no inspiration could flow out. I had forgotten to clean out the bad attitude, and left it sitting there for a bit too long. Before I knew it, everything was a rotten, stinking mess.

Cleaning it out must be thorough. It is not a quick, easy fix. I’ve been dealing with it, but I can detect that a bit of odor still lingers on. And there seems to be two steps necessary:

1) Clean out the nasty stuff.

2) Fill up with good stuff.

I need to get the garbage out, scrub everything clean, and get rid of anything that may be contributing, until I have a squeaky-clean heart.

And then I bring in the candles and flowers, cook the soup, bake the bread – all those things that make a house smell like a home.

Or fill yourself with the things that make the heart a home for Jesus to live in, fill, and overflow.

Stinky meat wrappers happen – I just need to make sure to get rid of them quick!