Stinky Situations

There is an animal that is more feared than most other animals. Especially in the rural parts of Western New York where I have been so blessed to serve. This animal has a nasty odor and any who can smell him run as fast and as far as they can. This poor animal is the skunk. How embarassing it is to be a skunk. Everybody is afraid of him especially his smell. The adventure that I am going to share with you is about how sometimes even we are careful we may still get that smell on us.

It all began one October night. My companion and I were about 10 miles from home and we had an encounter with our furry little stinky friend. We were driving home and it was a lot of up and down hills in the dark.  We were coming up to the top of the hill and we see him. He looks at us with a look that said to us, “You’re not really going to hit me are you?” and then my companion hit him. As she hit him he did that horrible thing that we all hope never happens to us. He sprayed. What makes it worse is that we left the heater on so it caused it to just get into the heating system and on us and in our car. So we keep driving home and the smell gets worse. We open our windows…bad idea. Eventually we make it home and we ask our downstairs neighbors if we smell. They say yes and then they offer to help us smell less bad by searching for how to rid ourselves of that smell. We eventually do get the smell off of us. It eventually wore out of the car too. And we learned a few valuable lessons. The first, always turn off the heat when you hit a skunk. The second, if you aren’t careful you will end up in a stinky situation that can sometime be difficult to get yourself out of.

So in our lives how many times do we find ourselves in stinky situations? What causes them? Sometimes it is bad decisions on our part. Sometimes it is bad decisions on the parts of others and we have to deal with the consequences. Sometimes it is nobody’s fault but it is just a part of life. So what do we do when we ourselves in these stinky situations? When my companion and I were in our situation we needed some home remedy laundry detergent, baking soda for our car mats, a little bit of time, and a good sense of humor as we tried to wash the smell off the car. When we are in our own stinky situations we need very similar treatments. When we make bad decisions we need the detergent that can be found through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. When it is the decision of others we need to often apply the gift of forgiveness so that the smell can leave even the car mats of our hearts. And when it is the things that we cannot avoid we often just need time and whenever possible try to laugh off whatever it that come your way. I know that there is never anything too hard or smelly that you will not be able to overcome. The skunky smell did leave us and the hard things will leave you too.