Smell the Dog Doo Doo

Last updated on: July 29, 2026 at 9:02 am by Jordan Hathcock

0 Comments

Smell the Dog Doo Doo 2026-07-29T09:02:51-07:00 Jordan Hathcock

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We’ve all heard the advice: Stop and smell the roses. It’s on coffee mugs, Pinterest boards, and probably hanging in someone’s kitchen next to a decorative rooster. And honestly, it’s not bad advice. We need moments where we slow down, take a deep breath, and simply enjoy the goodness that’s right in front of us. The warmth of the sun, the sound of the waves, the laughter of our kids, a good cup of bone broth (mmm delicious), or those rare moments when nobody in the house is asking where their shoes are. These are gifts. The damn roses matter.

But here’s the question I’ve been wrestling with: What do we do when life doesn’t smell like roses?

What do we do when it smells more like slimy dog shit?

Now, before anyone writes me an angry email, I’m not suggesting you wander around your yard taking long, contemplative sniffs of your Labrador’s latest masterpiece. If your dog leaves a present, grab the doggy bag. Your neighbors—and your shoes—will appreciate it.

But spiritually speaking, I wonder if we’re a little too quick to sprint past every unpleasant experience as though God only hangs out in fragrant places.

Our Addiction to Comfort

We spend so much of our lives trying to curate reality. We want smooth marriages, easy jobs, healthy bodies, obedient children, church without awkward people, and faith without doubt. We assume that if life starts smelling bad, something has gone terribly wrong. Surely God must have taken the day off.

Yet Jesus seemed strangely comfortable walking into places that everyone else avoided.

He touched lepers. He ate with people everyone else labeled as sinners. He stood beside the grieving. He wept at tombs. He embraced a cross instead of avoiding it. If anyone had reason to avoid life’s foul odors, it was Jesus. Instead, He stepped right into humanity’s mess and somehow revealed that God had been there all along.

The Mystics Didn’t Carry Air Freshener

I think that’s one of the great lessons of the mystics. They weren’t obsessed with escaping suffering as quickly as possible. They weren’t searching for pain either. They were searching for God, and they slowly discovered that God wasn’t waiting for life to become neat, predictable, and pleasant before showing up.

That’s bad news for anyone hoping spirituality is just aromatherapy with Bible verses.

Christian mystic Thomas Merton often pointed toward the importance of accepting reality instead of constantly fighting it. The Desert Fathers wandered into barren wilderness, not because they enjoyed discomfort, but because they wanted to stop running from themselves. Somewhere along the way they discovered that God has a habit of meeting us in places we’d rather avoid.

Spiritual Febreze

Our culture has become experts at deodorizing life. We filter our photos, polish our opinions, hide our failures, and curate our identities until everyone else’s yard appears to smell like roses while ours resembles a neglected dog park.

Social media has become one giant air freshener.

But reality has a funny way of breaking through. Someone gets cancer. A marriage struggles. A child rebels. Anxiety shows up uninvited. You lose your job. Someone you love dies. Suddenly all the inspirational quotes about positive thinking don’t quite cover the smell.

Our instinct is almost always the same: Get me out the hell of here.

And sometimes that’s exactly what we should do. Go to counseling. Set boundaries. Pick up the mess. Visit the doctor. Fix what can be fixed. Christianity has never been about pretending dog poop is perfume.

Holy Ground Smells Like Real Life

But before we rush to eliminate every discomfort, maybe it’s worth asking why we’re so convinced that discomfort means God has left.

What if some of the deepest transformation doesn’t happen while we’re smelling the roses, but while we’re standing in the middle of life’s less glamorous moments, resisting every urge to run away?

The mystics might say that suffering isn’t something to seek, but reality is something to embrace. And reality, inconveniently enough, includes both blooming roses and dog doo doo.

The Kingdom of God isn’t divided into sacred and smelly places.

It’s all holy ground.

Maybe that’s why Paul could write about rejoicing in suffering. Not because suffering is enjoyable, but because God stubbornly refuses to abandon us when life begins to stink. Resurrection wasn’t God avoiding the cross. Resurrection was God revealing that even death itself couldn’t keep Him away.