Smelling like Jeus

I spent the month of July off Instagram.

This seems like nothing to a lot of the world, but for me, this is a space of income for our family. I am in network marketing and this is my avenue to sell, to create content that I get paid to make, and to honestly keep up with friends and other colleagues.

April through June 2022 will now be remembered as the months of sickness for me. Truly, I would wake with sickness, recover, only to get sick the following week. This started around April and continued until, mid june, when I got… shingles.

yes, shingles.

When I inquired the NP who diagnosed me, I said, “isnt this somehting only old people get.”

When she replied with “well your generation had the chicken pox… and when young people get it, it is from stress.”

I wanted deeply to believe that I could recover from shingles if I just worked through it.

You know, full workouts and powering through caring for my two needy children.

But here I was crumbling under the weight of it all.

I simply could not get better… I simply could not recover.

I was drowning in nerve pain so deep some mornings I felt like I couldn’t see straight.

To top it all off, I was angry. Severely bitter that I couldn’t get better, that this wouldn’t just “go away”, that I had to get in my bed and ask my in laws to take care of my children.

I was angry that I couldn’t get my work done or clean my house.

I was angry that my workouts were forced to be put on hold because I was pushing a year postpartum still holding on to 20 pounds of uninvited weight, that, for someone reason, wouldn’t come off no matter what I tried.

I felt betrayed by my own body and bitter at every person who told me I needed to rest.

Rest? Seriously? Do you know my life and what I have to do on a day to day basis? I do not have time to rest.

I climbed unwillingly back into my PJs one afternoon and began to spin out in my head about the number of items on my to do list that were not getting done.

In the middle of my “reeling”, I felt the Lord so clearly interrupt my thoughts.

“Why cant you just stop? “

I felt confused. Why can’t I stop? Well, LORD, if you must know. I am a mama and a wife, I am a business owner. I am in charge of literally everything this household needs and my business isn’t growing how I want it to grow. I am trying to make it bigger so I can provide more for my family. I make money on social media and I have to create content to make that check. SO, how in the world can I even stop ?

“give me one month.” That’s all I heard and I KNEW in my soul and spirit that He needed my work.

I contemplated my yes.

Sadly, I didn’t want to listen. I had been able to muffle His voice enough in my life to still hear Him when I needed to and tune Him out when He asked hard things of me.

But this kept coming up.

I would even test it out on others, say what I was feeling, that I needed to take time off and people looked at me like I was crazy. “stop your business for a month?” you’re insane. you can’t do that.

I would waiver in knowing what I would heard.

Sitting on our couch one evening I said it to my husband. “I mean, how would I even take a month off? I feel like that’s crazy. It scares me.”

Without hesitation he responded, “Laura, why would you even question it? If the Lord says it you do it. He isn’t going to lead you into destruction. Not listening to Him will only do that.”

That was the final push I needed to hear.

I jumped in full force.

It was hard, I felt the FOMO, I felt the panic that I would be viewed as lazy. I FELT IT ALL.

How insane is that? The insanity that comes with being ON 24/7 is not how we were made to live. Which is why my body told me it was going to quit working for me until I would finally calm down.

But, the more I let it all happen to me, the less loud it all became. The more i invited the unwanted panic, anxiousness, nervous energy the more I realized how incredibly unimportant it all was.

The more I turned down the worlds music, the louder heaven got in my life.

I sat on the beach in the middle of July one night and thought about the woman who went to Jesus and covered him in her perfume.

When I picture her, I picture her running into the room where he was. Only candles lit, it was dark and nobody made a sound as they watched her come in to see Him. She was THAT girl. The one nobody wanted there. The one who maybe was never good enough in so many places of life that it led her to lead one that was filled with bad choices. The ones she was now being judged for choosing.

In my mind she was frantic and bringing in the only valuable thing she had to share with him.

So she brought that bottle of perfume. Worth a LOT of money. To honor him. She pours it all out. Not an ounce of it wasted in her mind. It is almost as if her conscious thinking was gone, all she knew was that HE was there, the King who could take all the burden she ever carried and somehow fix it.

so she shatters a glass and pours it out on HIM. Washes his feet with her hair. I imagine a lot of tears. Me too girl, me too.

Weeping and honoring and RELEASE. He didn’t have to say a word because she knew that nothing would be taken from her except the stress and pain of her life.

absolutely nothing would leave that would hurt her if it was gone. All that would be left was freedom.

I hope in real life it was an ungodly amount of awkward silence and heavy emotion. Enough to make people question her. Maybe even judge her for making the choice that made sense only to her.

But she didn’t care.

The people at that shamed her.

She didn’t care.

Jesus looked right at her.

“Your faith has saved you.”

She came to Him to give Him the best. Her best perfume.

An offer she probably could never ever return back to herself.

Yet, as she got up from that place, wiped her tears and left Jesus smelling like a million bucks.

But the best part of it all?

She smelled like Him too.

That thought rushed over me as I watched the waves crash. The beach is my happy place, where I feel that connection to the Lord and where He makes every confusing thing in my life clear again.

I realized, sitting there covered in gulf sand, that I carried that bottle of perfume. I spent too many days and weeks and months and even years caring so deeply about things rather than Him. And the more I kept that bottle closed off from reaching the feet of Jesus the less I could smell it.

July off was the best thing for me.

Maybe my faith saved me in that month too. Faith to say NO to a lot of important things, only to say Yes to listening to what He needed me to listen to.

It gave me answers, it gave me healing, it gave me Jesus.

Maybe, i’ve started smelling like him too.