Somethin's Fishy, Eating Crow, and Throwing Stones

I acquired the habit of sniffing from my mother. She smelled tomatoes to determine their ripeness, a laundry item to see if it really needed to be washed, a mattress pad, the “fruit room” in our basement….

After being in Minneapolis for a week's stay, I entered our garage and pushed the door open to our house. “Oh my goodness,” was my reaction. These perhaps weren’t my exact words... My husband had been home by himself for a week, so, you can imagine what I was thinking. I hinted to him that there was a weird smell in the house. He shrugged if off; his nose does not work like mine.

My sniffer went to work. I picked up his three pairs of shoes in the entry way and inhaled. Passable. The garbage needed to be emptied but did not stink. I found not a clue. A day passed and the smell worsened. Again, I went on a mission from room to room and determined the odor was most obvious in our utility room. His laundry?  No... The smell was worse than that. It had to be a dead mouse.  Where was that tiny dead beast? I poked around in corners and shelves and finally found the culprit.

Fish! On a shelf beside the freezer was a package of once-frozen fish, now thawed, and rotting. I had placed it there with the idea of tossing it…. Probably a week or two before when cleaning out the freezer. It was MY fault….

It seems that when I am ready to point a finger or find someone to blame, it occasionally comes back to me…  There’s a verse in scripture about throwing stones in John 7:8* and another verse about seeing the sawdust in your brother's eye and paying no attention to the "plank" in your own eye in Matthew 7:3*.

I learned as a mother early on that it did very little to lay blame or point fingers. Whether dealing with hurt feelings, banged-up knees, a squabble between siblings, it was best to go forward and determine how to make it better. Laying blame prevented progress. Finding ways to make my husband responsible for my rotting fish smell didn't make for a happy homecoming.

Next time, I'll do better.

John 7:8--When they kept questioning him he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Mathew 7:3--Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?