Guest Post by Marianne Badongen

Remember Marianne? She wrote a guest post last week. You should read it! It’s hilarious (and very meaningful). Check it out here. Well, she’s back with a moving story. If you’ve ever had to start a brand new life in a brand new place…well, let’s just say that this story will be familiar. Enjoy!

This is the third guest post from Marianne Badongen. You can read the other ones here and here.

 I think you’ll enjoy this story from the mission field. And perhaps desire a midnight snack when you’re done reading.

Creep Crawlies

Some evenings when my family lies deep in sleep, I must force myself to read, research, and write for my furthering education. Peanut butter and jelly on toast is my frequent energizer. One such night, I put my bread in the toaster and watched it toast. Imagine my surprise as the toast began moving. Trying to think logically, I decided that since toasting removes moisture from bread, the movement was the bread shrinking.

Then I smelled it. The smell of death. A smell worse than burning hair or feathers.

I did not have time to react before the toast popped up.

Clinging to one piece of toast was a crispy dead gecko.

All at once I realized the bread was moving due to a creature crawling inside my appliance.

So, I did what any missionary would do when faced with similar situations. I removed the gecko, put peanut butter and jelly on the toast, and enjoyed my snack.

Right about now, you are probably hoping this was a one-time incident. It was; I have never had another gecko in my toaster. However, it was not the last creature in my appliances.

One day I was cleaning the kitchen (as any wife would do). I removed the coffee filter basket to clean the coffee maker and under the basket was a dead cockroach. My stomach began churning. The two cups of coffee I drank that morning poured through the small opening under its body (after pouring over the insect). Only two possible explanations existed. The cockroach possibly died in the coffee maker and I made my coffee over it. The other possibility is that my hot coffee killed the disgusting creature while it was brewing. Neither thought was comforting.

Ants in my sugar, spiders the size of my hand in the bathroom, cockroaches in my underwear, snails in my living room, slugs in my kitchen, parasites in my intestines, and other lovely invasions are part of my life as a missionary. Some days I laugh. Other days I scream, “Who lives like this?”

The answer to that question is: ALL OF US!

We all live our lives with unwanted things creeping into our homes, families, thoughts, and souls. These unwelcome invasions can be in the form of addictions, sins, hatred, bitterness, disappointments, fears, and more.

As with controlling pests in a house, these infestations must be handled immediately or the problem will grow. Unfortunately, you cannot smack sin with a shoe to smash it. You cannot spray insecticide on addictions to kill the entire pile at once.

You must face these infestations the same way Christ faced temptation. He used the Word of God to defeat Satan’s attack. When we accept Christ into our lives, He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. By reading the Word of God and listening to the gentle leadings of the Holy Spirit, we can exterminate the things creeping into our lives trying to destroy the joy we find in God’s love.

There is only one more thing for me to say:

Would you like to come to my house for some coffee and toast?