Do You Smell God?

I love this picture because it so captures this puppy experiencing
the world around him with his whole little puppy body.

People tell me when they come over to our apartment, that after they leave, they smell like Megin. I don't really know what that means exactly. I guess that means they pick up on one of the fifteen eleven different perfumes or shampoo scents I have, or air freshener diffusers, or the mixture of cat, dog, kids, and febreeze that is our furniture. But whenever I tell them "I'm sorry," they typically laugh and say that it's okay, that they don't mind. I guess if they came over, they don't mind being around Megin, so smelling Megin after they leave isn't a bother to them. I know I'm comforted by the smells of people and places that are familiar to me or are associated with memories and times in my life that made me feel immense love and joy. Sometimes I'll find something with a scent that reminds me of my time in Hong Kong, or junior year of college, or something random like that, and I'll have to purchase whatever the item is that creates that scent just so I can SMELL it and somehow allow my mind and body, just for a minute, to be taken to that time again. What if it were like that with God? What if we SMELLED God? Does that sound crazy? Bear with me.

Where is God? We ask ourselves that question over and over while we look at our lives and the world and see chaos. We’re asking the wrong question though. The question isn’t where is God. God is. God is everywhere. Scripture says that the heavens declare the glory of God, that the earth cries out, the mountains, the hills, that people don’t need to declare His glory, that it is everywhere. So the question isn’t where this God we want to know is; rather, the question is, or the questions are, one should clarify, do we see Him? do we hear Him? do we taste Him? do we touch Him? do we SMELL Him? Are we Taking This God In? He is there. And it does not require great faith to know Him. We know that only the smallest amount of faith is said to be that which is faith enough to move the mountains. What an analogy. Because we do not actually need to move mountains to experience God and know Him. We don’t read about the disciples moving literal mountains or Jesus moving any for that matter. But we do read about God’s kingdom work coming down to earth through lives changed, people freed and people healed, spiritually, emotionally, physically, wholly, completely. Small faith opens eyes larger than they have previously been opened. Small faith sees a risen Savior alive on earth. Small faith encounters God.

But how do we activate this faith? Where is it? Because the argument can be made that people want to see God, hear Him, feel Him, taste Him, touch Him, SMELL Him, but that they just can’t. They are blocked. It is like He’s not there. Now THAT statement is true if there ever was a true statement. It. Is. LIKE. He’s not there. It feels like He’s not there, (truth), but we are deceived. (Remember that was Satan’s strategy from day one in the Garden…get people to DOUBT God, His goodness, His word to them- get them to doubt it, and it’s all over then). We are deceived into feeling exactly what we feel, and then our feeling becomes actual reality and truth. I certainly agree that feelings are not wrong. So when you feel God isn’t there, you aren’t wrong. But I also agree feelings cannot be blindly trusted. So when you feel God isn’t there, don’t blindly trust that. Test it. Ask Him. “Okay God, are You here? If so, show up. Prove it.” Does that sound disrespectful? Satan would have us think so. "You can’t tell God to prove He’s there. That’s disrespectful. You don’t do that," he'd Satan says. Well actually Satan, you just got finished telling me that God's a liar and not even here, so your logic doesn’t quite make sense now that I should respect Him and not tell Him to prove Himself. In actuality, if you’re right, Satan, and He’s tricking me, then the only PROPER response would be to tell God, "PROVE yourself true." At this point, we've won the logic argument with Satan, who was never truly that brilliant in the first place. And God, well God never hesitates to show Himself. Remember how He’s actually showing Himself constantly even when we don’t ask? Through the heavens and earth declaring His glory and the rocks crying out? Well certainly if He’s showing Himself without even being asked, He delights to show Himself when asked.

When I slowed down, I saw God again. I heard God again. I tasted God again. I felt God again. I SMELLED Him again. Yes even my nose smelled Him there… my nostrils literally flared. I used to live by every word of God, every word He spoke to my heart and mind every day. It fed me and led me everywhere. But the cares of world at some point began choking that life, and before I knew it, I practiced my faith, and that was it. I practiced being a Christian, and I practiced it well, and I practiced it from the motivation of wanting to know God and honor Him because that is what I was suppose to do. But I didn’t EXPERIENCE my faith. I believed it. But I wasn’t living in it. I was merely trying to live it as in do it, like it was a job to be done each day. But God. Yes….BUT GOD. He opened my eyes again, through a long build up and continuation of events, tragedies, sufferings, etc. He opened my eyes and my mouth and MY NOSE and my mind and my fingertips and my heart, and there He was… in Him I was living and moving and finding my being. My body sensed Him. And His words flooded my mind each day, not just Scripture….yes, of COURSE Scripture, but also just His everyday words TO me about life, which of course were always in accordance with Scripture, but were, ARE much more personalized to ME and my experience ... because that is who He is…HE IS A PERSONAL GOD. God indeed wants a PERSONAL relationship with me. God is my FATHER. And what Father does not want a relationship with his child? I certainly don’t want Eli and Eden to know about me. I want them to EXPERIENCE me. How many of us only know about God? It’s almost like we go through life as kids whose parent passed away and we have only the knowledge that the parent existed yet we don’t really know the parent. We want to know the parent, but we are limited by the confines of this present life and death. And that’s how so many of us live out our faith with God, tragically. But the truth is, God is not a parent that has passed away. God is here…and He WANTS us to KNOW Him. Remember, Luke writes,

"And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,... 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us," Acts 17:26-27

The greatest joy every day is having Eli and Eden EXPERIENCE me and my love for them, and EXPERIENCING their love for me in return. It is intoxicating. That is the love of the Father for us…a love from which nothing in this world can separate us. We feel separate, but we are deceived.

So I challenge you, ask Him. Ask God to show you Himself. Ask God to open your eyes and your heart and your mind and your mouth and your fingertips and your nose and every part of yourself to experience Him, so that you SMELL Him. So that wherever  you go, you take Him with you, you operate in the midst of Him, that you can't escape Him....He encapsulates you. He will do it. He never denies that request…He loves His own glory too much! (Thanks John Piper)! And if that thought there provokes and angers you and makes you think this God must be such a narcissist, well okay. Tell Him that. He can handle it. But recognize He will more than likely slow you down so that you experience Him. I venture to guess that most of us missing God are missing Him because we move so fast and can’t quit tossing our questions and wants and needs and fears and anxieties at Him. Yes, yes, we should cast our cares on Him. I don’t mean we aren’t suppose to go to God with all those things, but I mean that if we aren’t hearing Him, eventually it may come down to us getting quiet before Him and listening. He’ll open our ears and shut our mouths if we ask Him. Personally, He often comes to me through suffering, through Him rearranging my plans, or shutting my body down in some way to where I am forced to slow down. (Ask me about some of the crazy ailments I end up with...One may suspect I border upon hypochondria, but it's all God people! And for good reason. I'm a stubborn gal that doesn't slow naturally from striving for perfection and satisfaction through my own agenda). And honestly, I’m usually pretty pissed about said sufferings and slowings at first, until I start to know my God again, and then it all falls into place. Or, better put, then I see how it has all been in place, and I rise up and out of my cloud and into the great realm of life with Him.

Lotso-Bear ready for a trip through
the airport in March, 2015. I was 32-years-old
 and pregnant. TSA was a breeze, and I probably
got free food at some point because, well...duh.

Whenever I return from visiting my family in Georgia, the clothes in my suitcase often smell like my sister's house or my mom's house, wherever I've stayed. I love it. I tend to wash most things like people do when they come home from trips, but I have the habit of holding a few items back, keeping them out of the wash to wear while they still smell like my family. It comforts me. I feel with my family still. I experience them.

During the years I lived alone in Boston and New York, I would often carry sweatshirts and stuffed animals with me when I traveled back and forth. Yes, I walked through airports with stuffed animals when I was 27 years old. You should try it. You'll make friends and sometimes even get through TSA a little more quickly because even TSA officers love a good stuffed husky or pink bear. But God would use the scent of my family's homes on those items to comfort me when I was back up here alone. My loneliness was assuaged through the scent of home. I could put on the sweatshirt, and the smell enveloped me. At night, I could snuggle the stuffed animal, and I was comforted with the comforts of family. What if our relationship with God was so real that we were comforted by His scent at all times? His personalized scent to us! When I'm living in that space, it's like having that blanket or stuffed animal with the scent of home, but the incredible part is, the scent never wears off or goes away... in fact, just the opposite happens... the more I immerse myself in God, the stronger His aroma becomes until I am literally bound up by Him surrounding me, flooded with Him in all my senses. Thank You God for opening my heart and eyes and mind and NOSE to Your incredible self. Thanks for letting me smell You again. It's incredible because no matter where I go, I smell You there. You're everywhere. The heavens declare Your glory...even the rocks and hills exude You.. Your glory comforts me. It wraps me up, like my sweatshirts, like my stuffed husky and Lotso-Bear. And then I can't ever leave You because I smell You all over me, just like when my friends leave my apartment, and smell Megin. Praise God! Thank You God. You smell so amazing!

Jesse's Husky, Bosco, watching the planes
 take off at the Augusta airport, circa 2011.