-->This is an article I wrote this semester for my Editing class.
What is
that? Various odors poured into my
nostrils. One by one I examined them. Smoke.
Grease. Ooh, definitely B.O. Ugh, this guy reeks! Probably hasn’t showered in
ages.
I had spent a long weekend camping with my dad, stepmom,
stepbrother, and stepsister. My dad had just dropped me off at the Greyhound
bus depot in Edmonton, Alberta to send me back to my mom in Calgary. As a
17-year-old, I found myself sitting beside a slouched, young, presumably
homeless man who had called me over to sit with him just minutes before.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi.” The word scarcely escaped my mouth when I
gasped, choking on the stench.
He continued with small talk. “Where are you going?”
In as few words as possible, I explained that my
parents were divorced and I was returning to my mom’s after spending the
weekend with my dad. I struggled to keep from pinching my nose. He continued to
talk, but I didn’t hear much. I have met
plenty of homeless people, I thought, distracted by the fog wafting around
me, but most of them don’t let their
hygiene get this out of hand.
“Six’o’clock to Calgary leaving in
15 minutes!” A man hollered through the depot. Barely had his declaration left
his lips when I bolted for the door. Thank
goodness. I finally get to breathe. I sank into my seat by the window. Full
of relief, I took a deep breath through the nose. The stink was still there. Certain
I would suffocate, I stuffed my nose inside the neck of my sweater. Oh sweet mother of pearl! Coughing, I
jerked my nose out of my sweater. The smell was worse. What is going on?
Bravely, I re-examined each odor. Smoke.
Grease. Body odor. This time I noticed more. Pine needles, possibly? I felt the heat rising in my neck as color
filled my face. I had just been camping for four days. The smell was me.
Another camping trip came to my mind
from when my parents were still together. I had been around ten years old. I
can still remember the smoke and dust in the air. The ribbiting of frogs and
the yipping of coyotes as the sun began to kiss the horizon. That evening, my
mom decided she wanted to chop wood, an activity she had not done for a long
time. She raised the ax above her head and with an awkward wobble let it fall. Clunk. She missed. My brother, Landen,
and I giggled to each other, craning our necks to watch her next attempt. Clunk. Giggles turned into chuckles;
chuckles to cackles; and cackles swiftly turned into howls. We rolled in the
dirt, gripping our bellies, tears streaming from our eyes. “Ha ha! Mom can’t
chop wood!” I pointed a finger to mock my mother.
My dad, although he has an excellent sense of humor,
did not find this amusing. “You think it’s easy?”
Before my mom started, my brother had been chopping
wood. A seasoned Pathfinder, watching him chop wood was like watching a
hummingbird slice through the air; fluid motion and seemingly little effort.
“Landen did it all day,” I retorted. “I bet I could
do it.” My ten-year-old pride was about to get me into trouble.
“Alright,” was my father’s reply as he thrust the ax
into my little hands. “Here you go.”
In my brother’s hands the ax had looked light as a
marshmallow. In my own hands, however, it felt more like a backpack full of
dictionaries. With shaking arms, I raised my instrument of foliage destruction
above my head and let it fall. THWACK!
While my mother may have missed, I did not. However, I sent the block of wood,
my intended victim, sailing into my face at record speed. A scream split the
air. All of nature fell silent. Blood flowed, no, poured from my face. I was left with a one-inch gash across my left
cheekbone for the rest of the summer, reminding me of my lesson in humility.
It took a few years for me to be
able to laugh at my physically and emotionally scarring experience with wood
chopping. But as I sat on a dingy Greyhound bus waiting to go home, I
remembered my foolishness and let out a chuckle. I had thought my mother was
such a buffoon. Shamelessly, I had humiliated and taunted her, without any idea
how heavy that ax was. My pride dictated that I was better than her, yet
reality proved I was not.
Because that man was in a bus depot, I had assumed he
was homeless. The stench I detected had obviously
come from him. Yet I was in the same place, in the same condition: unshowered,
messy hair, grubby clothes, carrying a beat-up backpack.
In Matthew 7:3 Jesus asks a very good question: “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?” It is so easy to see fault in another person,
and easier still to overlook our own shortcomings.
Fortunately, God knows this. He wants me to overlook
the shortcomings of others and set aside my pride. This is hard and I cannot do
it on my own. So He helps me out once in a while by reminding me that I am the
one who smells, that I am dirty and need the blood of Jesus to clean me. I am
weak and need Him to carry my burden before I hurt myself.
