Weather can be a big deal. I’m not talking about the enough talked about Global warming – I mean just weather in general. Weather can halt an outside wedding. Weather can give you free days out of school. Weather can move a cow from one county to another and save a harvest from drought. Also, weather can give you rotten eggs. Really. Maybe I should explain.
One Easter when I was young we had snow on Easter Sunday.
Growing up in Oklahoma I can remember it being quite cold and snowy on a lot days for spring – Easter, May Day, and of course Prom night. Let’s just say that winter weather greatly changes your whole outlook on looking for Easter eggs. Snow clearly puts the hunt into the Easter egg hunt. Basically, we couldn’t play outside; it was just too cold and un-springish.
So Mom decided that we could still decorate our Easter eggs as planned, hide them, and then have the Easter egg hunt.
Wasn’t that so nice of her. . . to let us continue on with our festivities regardless of the weather forecast? Little did we all know that being nice about Easter egg hunts can be dangerous as well.
A few weeks later we all began to regret our little inside Easter day. You see, we had hidden several eggs but we didn’t quite find them all. Finding every egg inside a living structure is a detail that you cannot skip over. That would be like jumping out of the airplane to sky dive and to not have checked your parachute. Or, to get ready for work and forget to take off your worn out house slippers. We took great pleasure in hiding each and every colored object but didn’t take the same effort to remember where we put every single one. Therefore the old rotten egg smell overpowered everything in our midst. Much later of course, we found the egg and it was discarded but boy what a scented memory that lingered in our minds of Easter.
In life you will do many things and you will not always remember what you did even some little detail perhaps. But . . .somewhere tucked away in a little corner of your mind and most importantly in someone’s else mind it still exists even if you have forgotten. There it can sit and rot and decay and affect all things around it.
So often now as an adult my solution to that problem is to try to think about things before I say them. Look I said try; I’m human ya know! I think, is it the truth; am I being honest? Second, I think how will this affect the person I’m saying it to? And thirdly,. . . if I forget about it is going to have an rotten egg affect on me or anyone else weeks, months, or years down the road?
I can say through several periods in my life even through my christian life I have told lies, made up excuses, and spoken many an exaggerated story for no good reason. I can also say that for most of those . . especially ones that I forgot. . . I have had them come back to stink up my life.
No matter how I am now, my past can still come back and remind me of my rotten eggs. Regret is an enormous emotion that I wish I had realized at a much earlier age. It reeks a horrific disheartening stench in your life and is very hard to get rid of so you can move on to a sweeter and more pleasant life.
I know that as a christian we are forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ but I also know that as a human it is even harder to accept forgiveness from yourself. Proclaiming amnesia isn’t the answer no matter how obvious and although it frequently is a plot on television. Only the peace that comes from our Lord can heal our hurt and others’ hurt feelings which we may have caused. No matter what was said, what act was committed, or how buried and forgotten that easter egg is, God still loves us and forgives us. He will take away a lot of that stink in life that was left behind.
Now as for our family and Easter egg hunts it is a tradition that if it snows or blows . . . just use the plastic Easter eggs and NOT the real thing. It is a lot easier to eat all that wonderful Easter candy without worrying about a bad smell.
Born in Oklahoma and grew up there. Attended college and I have lived in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and now Florida again. I have been writing since I was a young teenager. I have children's books ( Where Is Grandpa? and Huggin' Jesus), novels, columns, and other works in progress. My latest novel is called "Famous By Default" and it is a romantic comedy. It is the first book in a 3 book series. . . Please stay tuned!
Growing up in Oklahoma I can remember it being quite cold and snowy on a lot days for spring – Easter, May Day, and of course Prom night. Let’s just say that winter weather greatly changes your whole outlook on looking for Easter eggs. Snow clearly puts the hunt into the Easter egg hunt. Basically, we couldn’t play outside; it was just too cold and un-springish.
So Mom decided that we could still decorate our Easter eggs as planned, hide them, and then have the Easter egg hunt.
Wasn’t that so nice of her. . . to let us continue on with our festivities regardless of the weather forecast? Little did we all know that being nice about Easter egg hunts can be dangerous as well.
A few weeks later we all began to regret our little inside Easter day. You see, we had hidden several eggs but we didn’t quite find them all. Finding every egg inside a living structure is a detail that you cannot skip over. That would be like jumping out of the airplane to sky dive and to not have checked your parachute. Or, to get ready for work and forget to take off your worn out house slippers. We took great pleasure in hiding each and every colored object but didn’t take the same effort to remember where we put every single one. Therefore the old rotten egg smell overpowered everything in our midst. Much later of course, we found the egg and it was discarded but boy what a scented memory that lingered in our minds of Easter.
In life you will do many things and you will not always remember what you did even some little detail perhaps. But . . .somewhere tucked away in a little corner of your mind and most importantly in someone’s else mind it still exists even if you have forgotten. There it can sit and rot and decay and affect all things around it.
So often now as an adult my solution to that problem is to try to think about things before I say them. Look I said try; I’m human ya know! I think, is it the truth; am I being honest? Second, I think how will this affect the person I’m saying it to? And thirdly,. . . if I forget about it is going to have an rotten egg affect on me or anyone else weeks, months, or years down the road?
I can say through several periods in my life even through my christian life I have told lies, made up excuses, and spoken many an exaggerated story for no good reason. I can also say that for most of those . . especially ones that I forgot. . . I have had them come back to stink up my life.
No matter how I am now, my past can still come back and remind me of my rotten eggs. Regret is an enormous emotion that I wish I had realized at a much earlier age. It reeks a horrific disheartening stench in your life and is very hard to get rid of so you can move on to a sweeter and more pleasant life.
I know that as a christian we are forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ but I also know that as a human it is even harder to accept forgiveness from yourself. Proclaiming amnesia isn’t the answer no matter how obvious and although it frequently is a plot on television. Only the peace that comes from our Lord can heal our hurt and others’ hurt feelings which we may have caused. No matter what was said, what act was committed, or how buried and forgotten that easter egg is, God still loves us and forgives us. He will take away a lot of that stink in life that was left behind.
Now as for our family and Easter egg hunts it is a tradition that if it snows or blows . . . just use the plastic Easter eggs and NOT the real thing. It is a lot easier to eat all that wonderful Easter candy without worrying about a bad smell.
