Skunk Dance at Midnight

With the many skunk sightings in the last weeks, I remembered a lesson I learned awhile ago and thought you would enjoy the story…

It had been a really, really, really bad day. Nothing went right. The weather was unbelievably hot and humid and life in this old farmhouse without air-conditioning was unbearable.

Everything was impossible.

All was dark and quiet when I gave up trying to finish things and headed to bed. I crawled beside my sleeping husband and lay there with the buzz of fans all around me, sticky, hot and miserable.

A tear trickled down one cheek, then another. It was all too much. I just couldn’t take the noise of the fans and the hot sticky house one minute more. Surely there was no one in the world as miserable as I was!

As the tears started falling, I knew I didn’t want to wake my exhausted husband, so I quietly slipped out of bed, walked through the sleeping house, and went outside.

As I sat on the picnic table by the house ready for a really good cry, something under the yard light caught my eye.

I gasped and froze. It was a skunk.

Now wasn’t that just perfect! I came outside to cool off and have a gigantic sob session; and there was a skunk. I didn’t even dare cry for fear I would startle her, and I sure didn’t want that to happen!

So I sat quietly and fumed. Inwardly railing at God, giving Him my best “Woe is me” speech.

But then, little by little, as the cool night air began to sooth my ragged emotions, my attention turned from my own problems to that skunk who crashed my pity party.

Soon I was engrossed and amazed. This little skunk wasn’t just eating all the bugs she discovered under the yard light, she reveled in them!

In the darkness of midnight, with my yard as her stage and the yard light providing her spotlight, this little skunk performed a dance to rival any on Broadway. She wiggled and rolled and dug, searching and eating. She was so excited that I’m sure, if I was closer, I could have heard her giggle.

She was loving her life!

I could just imagine that little lady skunk in a pink tutu with a bow in her hair. Soon I was giggling, too (inwardly of course)!

So there I was, sitting in my pj’s on the picnic table with the crickets and cicadas in symphony around me, watching a dancing skunk.

All the things that had seemed so overwhelming a few moments before, suddenly didn’t seem so important.

They were, as 2 Corinthians 4:17 says, “A momentary light affliction…”

I started thinking about the things that were right in my life instead of the things that weren’t. Soon my spirit was swaying to the music all around me.

Life was good again, thanks to a skunk dance at midnight.