Stinky Feet

Hannah is all girl. Everything about Hannah screams G-I-R-L from head to toe. And it's that toe part that I want to talk about today. Oh, the toes! Here we go...

Toes go inside shoes. And shoes are an important part of being a girl. I've never been amazing at the whole shoe thing, but I like to pretend that I at least know a little bit about the topic.

I know I am opinionated about ridiculous things, but I can't think of many more times when we women need to wear big white tennis shoes unless we are doing one of two things: 1) exercising or 2) cleaning house. Hannah doesn't understand this yet, of course. So when her dad gave her some tennis shoes, she didn't have a clue why I didn't want her to wear them with (for example) this:

(Excuse the poor picture quality, she wouldn't stop moving - another unfortunate side effect of the tennis shoes) Case and point. Four year-olds cannot be trusted to make good fashion judgements when it comes to shoes, so my motto has always been to NOT buy tennis shoes for my girl. My husband missed this memo, unfortunately. I might forgive him when she outgrows those shoes. (Love ya, honey. You know I'm kidding. But next time, let me do the shoe shopping.)

So. We have Hannah's first pair of tennis shoes out of the way. Now we move on to her first pair of heels. A sweet lady from Joey's work gave these shoes to Hannah:

Like a true girly-girl, Hannah LOVES her "heels." She wants to wear them all the time nowadays. She even dealt with blisters the first two days that she wore them, but she persevered and now wears her "heels" like a pro. (In fact, she is better than me. I never learned how to properly wear or walk in heels, so kudos to Hannah for being so awesome at it at such an early age.)

Now to the old standby shoes. Simple brown flats have been a standby for Hannah since she was old enough to wear shoes. Brown goes with most anything in her closet, so these shoes get a lot of use right now:

Cute, yet simple. Nothing much. But here is the horrible catch: these shoes make Hannah's feet stink. And I'm not talking about any kind of cute little girly stink. I'm talking STINK. Seriously. Because she sits behind me in the car and she has this wonderful habit of taking her shoes off the moment we get in the car, I have to smell these stinky feet. Stink City! There was one day I even had to drive home with my head out of the window so I could breath. (Joey tells me that I have the most sensitive nose on the planet and I am a bit of a drama queen, but whatever.) Stinky feet make me want to gag.

Then I smelled a TEACH moment approaching.

People, I have stinky feet too. I'm not talking literally anymore. My stinky feet might be my anger, my apathy, my laziness, my selfishness, my bad habits, my attitude, my tongue, whatever. I can keep my "shoes" on most the time and keep these stinks hidden. But no doubt, my heavenly father smells my "stink" as we ride along in the car of life sometimes. Sometimes the shoes come off. Sometimes I smell it too. Sometimes it makes me want to gag. I'm sure it makes God want to gag too.

But you know what? God doesn't drive home with the window rolled down as if he is about to gag at my "stink." Nope. He takes me home. He graciously offers to wash my feet. To wash the stink away. I let him. And it humbles me. Every time.

Thank you, Lord, for washing my stinky feet.