Teenage boys can get pretty stinky. Colton plays football. 8th grade has 2 teams and 7th grade has 3 teams. All 200+ kids share a small locker room. Each boy is issued 1 t-shirt and 1 pair shorts to use all year. They bring the shirt and shorts home about 2 times a week (if we are lucky) for parents to wash. All their shoes and pads remain in the lockers. You can only imagine what the locker room smells like. A couple of weeks ago, the school need a place to perform scoliosis screening. They set up in the boys locker room and brought kids inside in groups of 10. One girl was so horrified by the smell of the locker room that she threw up. Colton relayed to me that the coaches weren’t happy about the incident. They, in fact, started fussing at the boys. The coaches said, “You are not working hard enough. Only one girl threw up. Every one of those girls should have been sick.” Ah, life with boys is so much fun.
When I picked Colton up from practice a couple of weeks ago, he said “Mama, your car really smells.” I promptly told him that my car smelled fine before he entered it. He denied that it was him cause he didn’t smell bad while he was in the locker room. I told him that he should just hit the shower as soon as we arrived home. Kevin surprised us by having spaghetti ready when we got home. Spaghetti has always been Colton’s favorite meal. Colton was so hungry that he decided to forego the shower and just spray Axe all over his body. The results were unlike anything I have ever smelled before. He said he was just trying to stand himself long enough to eat before he took a shower. All of us sent him back to shower.
This encounter made me think about my relationship with my Father, God. I love Colton unconditionally. I don’t love him less if he smells bad, and I don’t love him more if he smells good. I love him for who he is beneath the smell. I may ask him to take some action because of his smell, but never does my love for him diminish. God loves us well. Even if my actions stink to high heaven, He still loves me. His love for me is not dependent on my fragrance. But because He loves me so much, I do want to offer my life as a fragrant offering to Him. May I hear His gentle nudges toward a clean heart. May I be a pleasing fragrance. I praise Him for lessons learned through my children.
