A Little Help, If You Please?

Life with a teen and a pre-teen boy is quite the adventure. The smells are ridiculous and in this TX heat, they become particularly apparent. The boys have been out shooting one on one a lot and that makes for smelly feet, especially when one of them decides not to wear socks (I’m withholding identifying characteristics to “protect the innocent,” as promised)!

The smell assaulted me recently, so I sent "that" son to the shower. The smell persisted though now mixed with the scent of soap. My husband sent him to wash his feet again, but afterwards said they still smelled though he could smell soap also.

Story confirmed; the boy did slather his feet with soap, but it wasn’t enough. That odor mocked us.

Way too early the next morning the Lord told me there are some smells we need help removing. Life is messy and as we walk through it, our feet reflect the mess. They get tainted with the dust and odors; it’s not appealing to those around us.

People screw up their noses at us and tell us "to bathe." And there’s a place for that because we often don't notice our own stench. But once we’ve tried our best to wash it off, there’s no point in sending us back over and over. It’s time to jump in and help us get the yuck off.

“Smelly feet” in life show up as bad attitudes, stinking thinking, fear, rejection…you name it. There’s a place for washing yourself with the water of the Word (meditating on who Jesus is, what He did for us and who we are in Him)—it’s a necessity. But there comes a time we need someone to wash us with the Word, as Jesus explained to Peter (see John 13).

Someone who will meet us where we are and help us get untangled from the mess we find or put ourselves in.

Later, when my son woke up, his feet still stank—and that morning, I washed them!