Busy and Overwhelmed

Even superheroes get headaches :-).


I have been neglecting this little blog as of late :-(. We have been crazy busy, moving and getting settled in. I haven't even had time to do a decent post about Dr. Phil's adventure. To make a long story short - he got sprayed by a skunk a couple of days before we had to move. He has a doggie door he uses to go in and out. He does this easily and independently. Even though he sleeps in the boys' room at night, when nature calls he just goes out the doggie door and does his business and comes back in. Well, on that fateful night, (we are guessing) he went out and he met a skunk and got sprayed. He ran in and immediately started rubbing himself all over the blue area rug in our family room to get off the horrendous smell. Then he returned to the boys' room and jumped onto Aaron's bed (which was unoccupied, Aaron was sleeping with Dave and I in our bedroom) and rubbed himself all over that as well to try to get the smell off. :-(

All of this was happening unbeknownst to us. We were all sleeping soundly. I was awakened not by the sound of Phil, but by a horrible noxious pungent smell that had wafted all the way down to our master bedroom. :-(

Bad, bad, bad.

Anyway, we have spend the last couple of weeks "deskunking." It has honestly been worse than the move. We have soaked and washed and bathed Phil numerous times. We have laundered, thrown out, aired out, baking soda-ed, Febreezed, our sheets and rug. We have had to throw stuff out that just could not be washed. Even after all of our efforts, we feel like we can still smell skunk :-(. Now that it has been a couple of weeks since the event, things are much better. Sometimes, though, Dave and I still feel like we can smell it :-(. That smell really just seeps into and holds onto anything porous - like fabric, hair, cardboard (remember we have cardboard moving boxes everywhere because of the move), and books. Blech.

When I texted a dear friend about the event, she wrote back:
"Consider it pure joy, my sister. . .You will probably look back on this and laugh someday, but not anytime soon."

Very true.

Actually the skunking made me think a bit about sin. How it is so invidious and repulsive. How you might think it would only affect a small compartmentalized part of your life - but actually it invades and touches everything in your life. Even the stuff that did not have direct contact with Phil stunk horribly! It also made me think about how all of our efforts to rid ourselves of sin' stencha nd effects are futile. It is pervasive, it endures. We need the Lord Jesus. He is the ONLY One who can cleanse us from sin and be that literal breath of fresh air.

In other adoption related news, our social worker came today to check out our new home and she is going to write an update to our homestudy. When that is finalized (hoping that it is next week) we will send off for out I800.

Hurry home, Lily Claire!