Musings: Guess what didn’t happen today?

Marie Armenia
Marie Armenia

Sitting on the shelf in our refrigerator is a plastic container filled with crumbled blue cheese.

Personally speaking, I think the smell of blue cheese is what the inner sanctum of hell itself must smell like. I have serious doubts about the mental stability of a person who smells blue cheese and says, "Yum"... really ... what are you thinking?

My blue cheese conundrum has a complicated twist: my husband loves blue cheese crumbles. He does. He does. He puts them in his salad, on his burgers. This reality rocks me to my core. I have no explanation. I just buy the stuff for him and hold it carefully as I put away the groceries. I have decided that living with a blue cheese lover is my cross in life.

Today, we had the grandkids over, and they ate lunch with us. We had a huge salad bar experience. We had lots of salad add-ons — nuts, craisins, cheddar cheese, and blue cheese crumbles.

The kids love blue cheese.

After lunch, when they were already back at home with mom and dad, I was cleaning up the kitchen and dropped the container filled with blue cheese crumbles on my kitchen floor. Time stopped. I watched it falling as if in slow motion. When it landed on the floor upside down, the cover stayed on, and the blue cheese did not fly all over my kitchen floor. HALLELUJAH!!

I started thanking the Lord for His immense kindness to me. I would have smelled that blue cheese for the next 12 decades and would have put the house up for sale because of it. The blue cheese container stayed shut tight.

It could have opened, but it didn’t. It got me thinking and thanking. Thinking about all the things that do not happen that I don't take time to thank Him for.

I didn't starve today.

I am not dying of thirst.

I am not hungry.

I didn't have an auto wreck today.

I didn't have to hide from bombs falling from the sky.

I didn't have to hide from an invading army.

I didn't have to sleep outside.

The list goes on. For you too. Sometimes, we need to take a moment to thank God for all the things that didn't happen today ... this is His grace and mercy and kindness to us all. Tomorrow it may be a different story. Tomorrow things could change. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

But today, I am thankful that a container filled with a disgusting, horrendous smell did not open all over my floor. And I'm not just talking about those disgustingly stinky blue cheese crumbles.

"Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song."

- Psalm 95:1-2

This article originally appeared on The Daily Herald: Musings: Guess what didn’t happen today?