Pickled Deer Anyone?

Well, I've used my children's mishaps and funnies along the way.  As you would know I have a confession of my own!  Yesterday I had my meal plan for the day ready.  I began thawing my meat for the evening meal (cube deer steak, hats off to my Will for the meat for our freezer) early in the morning.  By lunch time the meat was fairly thawed. At lunch I took the meat and put it in the refridgerator in a covered bowl.  I heard that vinegar would take the "wild" taste from the meat.  I set out to make my meal plan come together, so I soaked my meat in vinegar while in the fridge.  I put the vinegar covered meat in the fridge around noon.  After coming home from our homeschool group meeting I began cooking my meal for the evening!  I took my time and made sure everything looked just right!  I battered the meat and fried to a beautiful golden brown.  The meal was completed with green beans and rice.  The supper table was set, we were ready to begin our meal.  Will, my hearty little lover of food picks up his cubed steak and takes a HUGE bite!  I hear, "Mama, something's wrong with the meat!  It's sour or something." (The look on his face was priceless).  Well it hit me, and I began to snicker.  Mark says, "What did you do to the meat?".  I said, "I heard if you soaked it in vinegar it would take the wild taste out".  Well, I took a bite, my best description.... take a sponge soak it in vinegar and fry it!  The meat tasted just like vinegar!  It was HORIBBLE.  I can honestly say in all my years of cooking, this was by far my worse ever!  Well, the rice and green beans were good.  I was upset that I had taken so much time and energy to prepare this meal for my family and it turned out to be fried pickled deer!  Needless to say, I've learned my lesson about deer meat and vinegar!

This morning, as I was in my kitchen, kinda laughing at myself for my mishap last night, I felt like I really knew what this was all about.  The deer meat kind of reminded me of myself.  You see, we can sit and soak up all the "vinegar" that comes our way during the day, and no matter how much time we try and make things "look" good on the outside.  Just like I took all the time to batter all the deer meat and fry it to what looked to be perfection, all I wound up with was just fried pickled deer.  I said all that to say, sometimes I allow things to soak into me, anger or bitterness, and try really hard to cover it up and when it comes down to it, I'm just pickled deer!  Even though I started with a good peice of meat, after exposing it to the vinegar it turned out to be pretty yucky in the end.  Sometimes I know that I've allowed things to soak in to me that shouldn't be, so as I was thinking about this today, my prayer was Lord cleanse me, get me out of the bowl of vinegar!  I don't want the nasty yucky stuff coming out, I only want the goodness of the Lord!  My challenge to myself today, think about what the "vinegar" in my life is and ask God to help me remove it!