So, the day after the wedding, family and friends gathered
at the parents-of-the-groom’s home for a wonderful buffet. I’m not one for meat
pies but I have to say the Melton Mowbray pie was fantastic.
However, this is not about delicious pies, champagne or
strawberries. It’s about red wine, and how for the third time in my life,
someone taller than me has spilled a sprinkling of red wine across my
shoulders.
Not to worry, I reassured my hostess. I’ve got some red wine
stain remover at home, and it always works.
I hadn’t reckoned with a two day delay until I got home. Nor
had I reckoned with a very nice white bolero sweater which could only be washed
in cold water. I used my trusty spray and threw the sweater into the cold wash, only to
be disappointed to discover four conspicuous dark stains still there after the
cycle.
I used the Vanish bar. Then the Fels Naphtha bar, a
fifty-year-old remedy from the Midwest which my mother still swears by, and
indeed, until now it has always done the trick on the hardest stains.
Nada. By now I was afraid that I would rub the fine knit
into an ugly ball, so I let it drop back into the cold water and soak while I
walked Dusty.
It is still soaking, twelve hours later, but I do believe it
is fading a bit.
So the moral – besides always ensuring nobody with red wine
is trying to push past behind you – is that even the most stubborn stains may
eventually come out with enough soaking.
My soul is pretty badly stained. Don’t know about yours. But
I think that if the stains are ever going to come out, I need to soak in the
Spirit, soak in the Word, soak in Prayer.
Jesus says that he will make my sins whiter than snow. Now
that’s the main stain I want removed.
But I would be grateful, too, if when I wake up in the
morning, the wine stain on my shoulders has disappeared.
