I love when the cold weather comes in and it finally drops below 70. Every year about this time it starts to get a little chilly and the local wildlife decide to make their presence known. I don’t know if it’s the creek that runs past our house or the big, empty fields down the street, but the skunks seem to enjoy my yard and on occasion decide to dig under my house to make a nice warm home of their own.
This year has not been particularly bad… until tonight. I was on my way out to run an errand and opened the back door. That’s when it hit me. A solid wall of skunkiness. Apparently he had just wandered through my yard and decided to announce his presence just moments before I walked out the door. After a thorough scan of the yard and coming to the conclusion that my friend had indeed moved on and was not hiding around the corner waiting to hose me down, I went on to the car and headed on my way. That smell just sticks with you, though, and never seems to go away. Once that smell gets into the car, you are trapped.
A good friend of mine told me the secret to getting the skunk smell out of the car. When your driving down the road and you come across a skunk, roll the windows down. “What! You’re crazy. It stinks. I’m not going to roll the windows down.” He said, “roll the windows down.” So I did. And I learned a very important lesson. Roll the windows down. It works great.
We often go through life very focused on trying to keep the bad things out. It becomes a constant struggle of trying to “do good”, and by “doing good” what we really mean is not doing bad. I am not a bad person, but sometimes my life just stinks. I get off focus. I get into some bad habits and start going down some path that I know I shouldn’t be going down. My first instinct is to roll the windows up. Cut off the bad influences. Tell myself I’m not going to do that any more. To focus on not doing bad.
When we focus on the thing we don’t want to do, we think about it all the time. When we roll the windows up, we trap that stinkiness in the car and it has nowhere to go. Roll the windows down. Stop focusing on the bad and start focusing on the good. Let the fresh air in and it will push out the skunk air. Fill your life with good, positive relationships, especially a relationship with Jesus, and the pain and stink in your life will eventually be overcome with the fresh air. It doesn’t happen instantly. You have to drive down the road a bit to get away from the skunk, but it does work and the fresh air is good for the soul… and the nose.
So I find this law at work: Although I
want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;
but I see another law at work in me, waging war
against this law of my mind and making me a
prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What
a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this
body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God,
who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:21-25
As we start this season and set new goals, lets focus on what we want to do or be instead of what we don’t want.
Comment below and let me know your thoughts on life or tips for getting rid of the skunk smell.
Curtis
Good thoughts! It reminded me of when I quit smoking a couple decades ago. “When we focus on the thing we don’t want to do, we think about it all the time.” It’s true of so many things and actions. The Romans 7 experience absolutely.
(And your MIL is, in fact, weird, when it comes to skunk smell!) 🤪
Thank you for that insight! Yes, we try not to do bad and “roll up the windows of life” to try to protect ourselves. This is your weird MIL. I like the smell of skunks because it reminds me of my childhood in Oregon. We lived in the country and there were skunks around. It was a good time in my life. To each their own.