CHAPTER SIXTEEN: LIVING WITH A STINKER

From my book Like a Sweet Fragrance

The stereotypical Texas experience beckons (or sometimes repels!) many people who are not from Texas. Hunting and fishing, riding horses and driving four-wheelers, wearing cowboy hats and roping cows, and, of course, eating belly-up-to-the-bar barbecue. Then, there’s Blue Bell ice cream made in that little Texas creamery down the road from my small town. The list is as endless as the miles across Texas, and when company visits us from out of state, we try to do it all. This past summer, however, my fourteen-year-old nephew, vacationing from Maryland, had a new request. In addition to the other Texas “thangs” he wanted to do, he wanted a Texas accent! So we worked on his accent and he perfected a few phrases like “I reckon” and “hey y’all and “howdy” – all required slang in a stereotypical Texan’s vocabulary. Well, almost all; the “howdy” might be part of my Aggie heritage!

My brother’s family from Maryland loves the cowboy thangs from Texas, and they can spend hours browsing through Lindemann Store, a country store in the community of Industry, which sells those thangs they normally don’t see in Maryland stores. Thangs like chickens, for example, which they discovered while wanderin’ and lookin’ for Texans quite regularly drop the g's from the end of their words.  One year, they were so enthralled with the thangs they saw that I went around explaining to people, who were staring at them like they were from another planet, that they weren’t from around here; I don’t know why that mattered, but I felt like I needed to enlighten Lindemann’s regular customers. On their last trip, my nieces and nephews were disappointed there were no chickens to buy. The store probably stopped selling them after that first invasion by Maryland aliens!

Since my brother was working the day we visited the store, I took a picture of his five kids in front of the Lindemann sign to text him so he wouldn’t miss out on the afternoon excursion. While I was taking the picture, quite suddenly, a partially toothless cowboy wheeled around in a beat-up, green pick-up truck, stuck his head out of the window, and drawled in a molasses-thick Texas accent, “Hey y’all. Say possum fat!” A western movie director couldn’t have planned a more perfect stereotypical Texas moment! And we’ll never take another picture again at the Lindemann Store without yelling, “Hey y’all. Say Possum Fat!” In a few years, if you hear that phrase in Maryland, you’ll know where it originated. Since that visit, however, we have had many “possum fat” moments.

David also had many “possum fat” moments, surprising and sometimes shocking moments recorded by life’s camera for the world to see, moments not necessarily planned, but moments that happened nevertheless. Whereas Michal’s tumultuous relationship with David began with love and ended in bitterness, David’s encounter with another soon-to-be wife literally stopped him in his tracks. And his run-in with her husband -- a foolish, drunken, gluttonous, selfish, rich, and evil man -- didn’t exactly capture the best angle of Michal’s fugitive husband, now on the run from King Saul. 

After crawling out of Michal’s window, David attracted a large following of men and their families, whose numbers grew and grew. He may have been a fugitive, but he was a successful one! And once, while camped in the Desert of Maon with a group of over 600 loyal men, David heard that Nabal, a rich man whose animals he had been protecting -- not because he asked, but because they were in the same area of David’s camp -- was shearing sheep, celebrating the financial success of the season, success partly due to David’s valuable protection of the man’s valuable sheep. The story recorded in 1 Samuel 25 tells us that David was protecting not only the man’s sheep, but also watching over the shepherds who were taking care of the sheep, forming a protective wall around them all and shielding them from possible predators. Whether Nabal realized it or not, David was doing him a huge favor. At a time when success was celebrated, however, this biannual festivity didn’t make Nabal generous with his wealth or with his heart, and he refused to compensate David for his valuable help. 

What we do for others has value, and it hurts to have it ignored. Even for a man like David. 

Many times, a person’s name in the Bible helps us understand exactly what that person is like, and Nabal’s name, which means fool, describes him perfectly. Additionally, the connotation of fool in the Old Testament Hebrew has more to do with being morally deficient than it does with being stupid or ignorant, even though those, too, define Nabal. In fact, Nabal was more than a simple fool, but was called “the son of Belial” (KJV), meaning worthlessness, an Old Testament phrase which “refers to evil people who deliberately broke the law and despised what was good” (Wiersbe). Nabal was bad news.

On his recent visit to Texas, my nephew David, with his newly formed Texas accent, asked my husband if he’d fry some of the fish they caught. A patient young man, David waited until Uncle Ian had some extra time, which also happened to be the last morning of their vacation. So after giving David’s younger brother, Michael, a shooting lesson, Ian fried fish in the kitchen where I am making pancakes for my family’s last breakfast at the ranch. But when my seventeen-year-old niece Jennifer came downstairs covering her nose with her hand and turning slightly green, the color the fish had once been, I knew she wasn’t going to want eat buttered pancakes with maple syrup. Some smells permeate the entire area, not with their fragrance but with their stench, and the stink of fresh fish guts piled in the sink combined with the odor of a frying fish, even one seasoned with garlic, is a revolting smell for many of us to wake up to in the morning.  

Nabal was like that dead, deboned, gutted fish, waiting to be fried, stinking up the ranch kitchen and nauseating the girls in the house. Nabal stunk. And Abigail, Nabal’s wife, was waking up every morning with this stinker, a stinker who was going to fry if he didn’t watch out for David’s temper had grown quite hot. 

The opposite of her nasty husband, Abigail was beautiful, but she was also “kind” and “smart” and “important” (Stockett). Abigail was Nabal’s help at a time when he deserved none. Additionally she was known for having good common sense as well as moral goodness. In our culture, we say opposites attract; in their culture, marriages were arranged; and in any culture, good and evil don’t mix. Unfortunately, Abigail was married to a bad guy, a fool who didn’t realize that David and his men could easily have taken what they needed to eat, but didn’t; instead, they respectfully asked, hoping Nabal would compensate them for their helpful service.  

During their Texas vacation, my brother had to fly to Denver for the day. At six o’clock in the morning, a black town car drove up the winding gravel drive about three miles outside of Industry to pick him up from the ranch where we were staying. Between fishing and shooting, Ian had offered to take him to the airport, but my brother’s company provided this service, regardless of where he was, so he could work the whole time he was in the car. Someone came, picked him up, and drove him several hours to the Bush Intercontinental Airport so he could use his commute time efficiently.
   
David’s men helped Nabal’s men use their time more efficiently, guarding and protecting the flocks, and because they did, the shepherds could do their job even better.  Nabal, however, didn’t see it that way and responded belligerently to David’s request for compensation, hurling “insults at them” (1 Samuel 24:14) and demanding to know why he should share any bread or water or meat with “men coming from who knows where" (1 Samuel 25:11). In Hebrew, the connotation is that of a bird of prey shrieking as it swoops down to attack! (Wiersbe). Nabal’s unpleasant attack demonstrates his foolishness for David, famous for killing tens of thousands of the dangerous Philistines, was camped outside of town with a small army!

Isaiah 32:6 says, “For the fool speaks folly,” and the “hungry he leaves empty and from the thirsty he withholds water,” a verse which aptly describes Nabal’s behavior at this point. But when David’s men relayed Nabal’s disdainful response to their leader, he, too, “speaks folly,” demanding they put on their swords, vowing to wipe out Nabal’s entire household, and riding off for revenge, a surprising response from the “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:13-14) who was in this position because of his generosity of spirit.

I mean, I can get crazy over food, too, but this is nuts! In Proverbs 17:12, David’s son Solomon later wrote:  “Better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his folly.” David had already met and fought bears (1 Samuel 17:36), now he is after the fool, and that fool better look out because David, armed and dangerous, is acting foolishly, too. 

Sometimes when I’m mad at Ian, I’ll stop calling him by his name and start referring to him as “that man who makes me so mad!”  Furious at Nabal, David rants that it has “been useless” to watch “over this fellow's property in the desert” because he “has paid me back evil for good” (1 Samuel 25:21). Nabal has become “this fellow” and when someone starts calling you “this fellow” or “that man,” you’re in trouble!

Do you know what it’s like to do something nice for someone who doesn’t appreciate your efforts? Maybe you’ve helped a colleague in a way that made it easier for him do to his job, yet he showed complete disregard for your efforts. Or you tired to help your spouse, but she misunderstood your motive. Or someone treated you like trash, disdainful not only of your help but also of you. Have you been in a situation where your good intentions were thrown back in your face?

Undoubtedly, it’s probably happened to all of us at one point, and it hurts.  Recently when it happened to me, I didn’t arm myself with a sword -- that would have been really weird -- but I armed myself with the sharp sword of my mouth and foolishly went on the attack, acting much like David.

But someone is always watching, and Nabal’s observant servants ran to the one person experienced in dealing with his foolishness, the one person who knew what it was like to deal with his unreasonable behavior, the one person who had probably lived for years with his nasty attitude, and the one person who knew what a stinker Nabal really was. The servants begged Abigail for help because Nabal was “a wicked man” no one could talk to (1 Samuel 25:17).

Maybe you, too, know what it’s like to try reasoning with someone who is unreasonable.  Or even to live with a person like Nabal. To say it’s difficult is an understatement. David, however, didn’t try to reason with Nabal; instead, David reacted, and his reaction was to destroy the man who offended him. But innocent victims were going to be hurt, and the servants didn’t want to suffer because their master was a fool and treated people like trash. 

The dirty halls of the large high school were filled with trash, and cleaning them was a long, thankless, never-ending job. The lady responsible for keeping them clean was frustrated. One day, however, she thought she had solved the problem. Wearing a dusk mask on her face and wielding a leaf blower in her hand, she blew the dirt down the filthy floors of the building and out the front door. 

What seemed like a good idea, in reality, produced a more massive mess than the one she was trying to clean. Yes, the dirt was off the floor, but it was now on the lockers, the desks, the tables, and the people, who were sneezing and coughing and choking. Eyes were watering and after-school tutorials were disrupted. Finally, one brave soul kindly suggested that using the leaf blower, instead of the push broom, might not be the best way to clean up the mess.

Even though the efficiency and creativity of her idea were laudable, her solution to the problem made those around her miserable. Teachers couldn’t tutor, students couldn’t concentrate, and no one could breathe. The noise of allergic reactions rivaled the noise from the leaf blower. She needed to stop, and she did. At once. Bless her heart. And then she once more began to sweep, a harder and more tedious process, but one that eliminated the filth without hurting other people.

I haven’t carried a leaf blower to sweep out the dirt in my life, but I’ve definitely tried to take short cuts. I’ve also tried pretending there wasn’t any dirt. There have been times when I’ve looked at mistakes I’ve made, the debris I’ve left behind, the things that needed cleaning up, and the people I’ve hurt in the process, and I’ve wished there was an easier way to deal with it all. But the reality is until I follow the wise example of the cleaning lady and immediately stop when I realize what I’m doing is wrong , I’m making a bigger mess than before. Until I stop trying to circumvent the problem, it won’t go away. Until I stop doing it my way and start doing it God’s way again, the dirt doesn’t disappear. And when I stop immediately, that happens even faster. And fewer people are hurt.

Abigail’s job was to convince David to stop before he made a bigger mess and hurt innocent people. Acting quickly, she sent David an enormous gift of food, then off she went, armed only with what God had given her to accomplish this dangerous task:  bravery, good sense, intelligence, and the wisdom not to tell her husband, who probably would have tried to stop her. God provides us with what we need to fight. He sends us with what we have. We are more than an answer to a problem. We are sent by God in a divine encounter to intercede in the lives of others.  We may not know it. They may not know it. But God certainly knows it. And God, who created time, can also orchestrate a timely encounter.  

Leaving one fool behind, Abigail goes to meet another who had just said, “May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to” Nabal! (1 Samuel 25:22). David’s eyes are not on God, but God is watching David, and just as God placed Michal in David’s life at the right moment to help him escape those trying to kill him, he now sends Abigail to help David escape from making a foolish mistake. And Abigail stops David in his tracks – literally – and steers him in the right direction once more.

At a recent gathering, it only took one cursory glimpse at the angry woman who stomped inside the room for most of us to steer clear. Obviously, the explosive anger simmering beneath the surface was ready to erupt. Whatever she was mad about was a doozy! However, when two attentive women, who were more concerned with the woman’s pain than their own feelings, positioned themselves on either side of her and started chatting, her heated demeanor slowly subsided. The fuming emotions bubbling beneath the surface began to seep away, gradually replaced by a sparkle in her eyes and calmer behavior that didn’t scare everyone else to death! Those two caring women tag-teamed her! They made her feel important by listening to what she had to say. And they diffused her ignited anger just as God diffused David’s anger, joining with Abigail to tag-team David. Abigail was not facing this gigantic problem alone; God was with her.  God doesn’t throw us out into the world without going with us; even his name – Emmanuel, God with us – testifies to that fact.

Our son Will was an enthusiastic crawler, crawling not just in closets and toy bins, but in the dishwasher, the dryer, the fireplace, and any other appliance or small area that he could figure out a way to climb into. His curiosity required constant vigilance on our part for we never knew where he might end up. One day, our older son came running in the house, yelling, “My brudda. He stuck!” Will had crawled through the back of a chair and Reid couldn’t get him out, so the two of us carried the brudda, chair and all, down in the pasture to find Grandpa, who laughingly sawed him out of that chair!   

Our brudda David needed help even seeing that he needed help, and it wasn’t a laughing matter!  But God sends people to us even when we can’t see what we need. In Acts 9, God sent Ananias to the blinded Saul, who was praying, and when the scales fell off his eyes, he could see once more. David was a praying man, but in this story he was reacting, not praying; however, a prayer was answered even if he hadn’t asked it. And because of his encounter with Abigail, David saw the danger of his foolish behavior and stopped. In his tracks. Immediately. 

My sister Liese is a woman like Abigail. She is a woman of good understanding and discernment. Because we didn’t grow up together, I have known her for less than half of my life, but she has all my respect. She is a prayer warrior unsurpassed. In a short period of time, I have come to trust her with what matters most:  to pray! The other day I got up, and before I could remember my name, there was a text from her that I was all prayed up! Liese is willing to go where God sends her, and God regularly sends her to fight battles as an intercessory prayer warrior, praying for people who have no idea she’s even praying for them, men and women who experience answers to prayers they’ve never even asked!

Abigail was an answer to a prayer that David had not even asked!
 
While my family was vacationing Texas-style, my friend Susan Murphey brought us a Texas-size container full of freshly-baked, melt-in-the-mouth sugar cookies to enjoy. Ironically, she hunted us down at the bakery to give them to us! When Susan handed the container to me, I told my niece Melissa that I wasn’t going to be able to stop eating the cookies! Back at the ranch, it wasn’t long before I went to Susan’s container where I found, upon opening it, a handwritten sign inside which read:  No cookies for Aunt Becky or else! Melissa had paid attention to what I said and tried to help me solve the problem I hadn’t been able to solve myself! And you know what? That stopped me! In my tracks! No cookie! How sweet it is that no problem is too small for God. Whether it’s eating too many cookies or wiping out an entire household, God strategically places others in our lives, sometimes to warn us against making mistakes.
  
When Abigail saw David, she bowed before an important, powerful, and angry man chosen by God to be king one day, then she took responsibility for what had happened -- even though it wasn’t her fault -- and apologized for not seeing the men David sent, taking the blame because someone in her family had mistreated them. If she had seen them coming, she would have made sure they received the proper respect and were properly compensated for their valuable work. And then she pleaded for the safety of her servants and the rest of her household as if they were her own flesh and blood. As if they were her own family. She took up the cause of the innocent, fighting with what she had. And Abigail fought courageously, better prepared to deal with this situation because of her experiences with Nabal.

God can use whatever we are going through right now to prepare us for the future, a future that he alone knows. 

As a school teacher, I learned quickly that my students will live up to my high expectations, and Abigail had plenty to teach David. Emphasizing David’s high calling, she reminded him he was a man who heroically “fights the LORD's battles,” (1 Samuel 25:28), one who didn’t need to have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself” (1 Samuel 25:31).  Over and over she mentions the LORD’s name, cleverly reminding David that God is most definitely watching, and quickly stopping him in his boots or sandals or whatever he was wearing as she confronted him with the reality of his ungodly actions. Abigail spoke to his heart, and David listened to this beautiful, intelligent woman, who was bravely facing a small army and their angry, irrational leader. Who’s the hero now?  “David! Say, possum fat!” 

What would it have been like for one small woman to face a large group of men “descending toward her” (1 Samuel 25:20) with an angry warrior, known for his military prowess, leading the way?  For me, the closest visual is imagining a high school full of angry teenagers, armed with staplers and rulers and pens, storming my classroom. Abigail’s difficult situation is simply hard to imagine. But even though the chances are remote that we’ll have to face an army alone, we do ride alone into many situations, and we, too, are sent by God into the lives of other people just as they are sent into ours. Some of those people are unreasonable, some are dangerous, some are confused, and some are foolish. Just as we can be at times. And when this happens, all of us need a reminder to keep our eyes always on God.

David was treated unfairly; we can be treated unfairly. David’s motives were not understood; our motives can be misunderstood. But David’s anger was leading him to sin just as our anger can lead us to sin. From Abigail and David’s story, however, we are encouraged to go quickly to help, but move slowly when angry for “vengeance belongs only to God” (Deuteronomy 32:35), a reminder that God is the only one who reads the human heart and who understands the motives behind the actions. David had to give up his right for revenge, trusting God to do what needed to be done. And God soon took care of Nabal, who died not long after Abigail returned home.
 
My brother’s seven-year-old son, Michael, is the kid people look at and then smile because they can’t help themselves. During their Texas visit,  the older kids were learning how to shoot a gun with Uncle Ian, but Michael was napping and missed out on the activity. He missed the safety lesson, the shooting, and all the fun that went with it – all under the supervision of Uncle Ian, of course. When Michael woke up, he was quite upset, but we told him that Uncle Ian would still take him to shoot a gun before he went back home.

That next morning, I went upstairs to wake the kids, and before Michael even opened his eyes, he mumbled, “Uncle Ian said I could shoot the gun!” Then Michael shot up (no pun intended) out of that bed and was dressed before I could make it downstairs.

Michael thought he had missed an opportunity, yet he woke up excited, hoping that he was still going to get his chance. And he couldn’t wait! I’ve thought about that moment many times for that’s the way I want to live my life, excitedly waking up each day, eager for the new opportunities that are more than my old disappointments! Momentous days filled with God, who is God of today, not just of yesterday.

David didn’t miss it – almost, but not quite!  In his own words, he had “a close call.” Then he told Abigail, “The God of Israel” was the one “who kept me from hurting you” and “ if you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat” (1 Samuel 25:32 The Message). David proved once more that he was a man who needed saving, sometimes from himself.

After watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the seven-year-old twin boys, caught up in the contagious excitement of the weird inventor’s flying car, couldn’t resist jumping in their father’s truck parked at the top of the hill. And when they somehow shifted the gear and the truck started to roll, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang became more of a reality than a movie. Luckily, after coasting for a short while, the truck stopped before flying into the pond at the end of the hill, and the boys jumped out right in the nick of time. Many moments later, after dealing with their behavior, their distraught mother heard one twin mutter to himself, “Whew! That was a close one!” 

David had a close one! No doubt about it! For David, this was a “possum fat” moment!

Undoubtedly relieved to have survived her own close call, Abigail, who must have been exhausted, returned home to a drunken husband, who was gorging and celebrating while she was gone. But when he finally sobered up enough for her to tell him what happened, “his heart failed” and “ten days later” he died (1 Samuel 25:37-38). And as soon as David heard, he asked Abigail to be his wife, proving he wasn’t so foolish after all. All I can think of is how glad I am that the bride price for this marriage wasn’t more foreskins!

Before he was king, David was a shepherd, a musician, a hero, and a fugitive, but he was also a writer, and the psalms, which he lived out before he ever wrote down, continue to draw us to God like a sweet fragrance. How tragic it would be if David’s only legacy was his success for we are drawn closer to God by seeing how he continued to love David even when he was acting like a stinker. God was the one who said that David had a heart like His own, which is reason enough to be intrigued by the life of God’s chosen king. But just as the powerful fragrant aroma of David’s triumphs challenges us to be strong and courageous, the powerful stench of his defeats also challenges us to be strong and courageous. And to know God cares even when we’re in the midst of the most unpleasant situations. 

That last morning we spent at the ranch was another near perfect day for me. I woke up early, wrote in my journal, had lots of God time, and visited with my family. It was a wonderful, enjoyable, vacation-like day, and when they left town, I cried as the world burst through my bubble. But it’s a good world, and it’s a good God, and I’m thankful for all those he sends in my life, a life that’s good even if it’s not always easy.

Abigail’s day might have gone like this:  I woke up married to an unreasonable man, the biggest fool, an evil person, a complete stinker who was absolutely impossible to talk to, and then God turned my world upside down. Once upon a time, I met a handsome, rugged fugitive who was out-of-control, yet loved God with all his heart, and my life will never be the same.

And Abigail’s life wasn’t. She may have married a man who loved God, but that didn’t mean she had an easy life for soon after her marriage to David, she was abducted and taken captive, continuing to need the courage only God can provide.  But as she once saved David from himself, he also rescued her, undoubtedly determined not to lose his beautiful, intelligent, and courageous wife.  

Like Michal, Abigail did not have a lot of choices, but unlike Michal, she did not live with bitter might have beens; instead, she chose to be brave, she chose to do what was right, she chose to fight for the innocent, and God opened a window of opportunity in her life. Immutable, God remains mighty, sovereign, and perfectly able to give us windows of opportunity even when it seems we’re leading a life of no choices.

As we read about David and Abigail, we see how God works, intervening on our behalf, saving us from ourselves, and providing courage and wisdom for us to live our lives. And their intertwined story leaves behind a sweet message of encouragement for those who know what it’s like to live or work with difficult people for the reality of who God is does not change even in a “possum fat” moment. Omniscient and omnipotent, God specializes in sending help of all kinds, and sometimes that help is us.

Stockett, Kathyrn. The Help. New York:  Putman, 2009.

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Successful. (1 Samuel). Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.