Don't Toot In a Tanning Bed

Chapter 1: Don’t Toot in a Tanning Bed Have you ever noticed how God is able to use the smallest and most mundane (or in this case, perhaps bizarre is a better word) events in life to teach us a lesson? That’s what happened to me one day at the spa! To set the stage for any of you unfamiliar with a tanning bed, imagine being in a large tin can laid on its side, cut through the middle with the top portion operating as a door on a hinge. Now imagine lying inside and pulling the door down, closing the can around you. There are only a few inches between you and the top and each side. A tanning bed is very similar, with lighted bulbs above and below you under a protective casing of a clear substance much like glass (maybe it is, for all I know). At your feet is a fan blowing up across your body and into your face to keep you semi-cool during the ‘treatment.’ To further set the stage, now imagine that you have been on a temporary meat-free diet consisting of a lot of beans. Okay, you may already have pictured the problem. Once a little ‘vestige of beans blip’ slips out, so to speak, it is blown right where? You have it! Into your face! Not the best thing to happen when you are in such close quarters! To top it all off, I thought to myself, “OOH, don’t toot in a tanning bed” and got the giggles so bad I almost beaned myself on the top of the bed (no pun intended). Have you ever gotten the giggles somewhere when it is totally inappropriate to laugh? Did you have my problem in that it made me laugh even more? I had to try my best to be quiet because I was afraid people would call in the men with the white jackets, thinking I’d lost my mind. I mean, after all, why would someone be laughing hysterically in a tanning bed? When this happened to me on that fateful day, I asked, as I am learning to ask often, “Does God want to use this event to teach me something?” So, I asked Him and sure enough, He was able to use this as another of His very clever life lessons. What, you may ask, does ‘don’t toot in a tanning bed’ have in it that would be at all spiritual? Let me tell you what He told me that day. In John 16:8 Jesus tells His disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, “He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” God’s message to me that day was actually quite simple. He said that my indiscretions, or sins, were as a foul smell to Him. He told me that He had been trying to teach me some things, mostly things to do with my mouth, that I hadn’t been hearing (or maybe was just ignoring?), so He was going to blow them back onto my face much as the ‘bean blip’ had been blown onto my face, and do it in a way that was just as hard to ignore as that little blip had been. I decided right then and there to begin to do a better job of listening to that still, small voice Whose job it is to convict me of sin and to do my utmost to send good smelling gifts up to My Lord and God! And because we are told in Revelation 5:8 that our prayers are incense in heaven, I began right then by praying a prayer of thanksgiving and praise for the message I had just received!