I am truly thankful for the public school education I received in the ’60s and ’70s.

That includes my college and postgraduate education.

But all that education did not prepare me for learning house-keeping in my first year of marriage.

When Julie and I got married, we lived for a year in a very old house in Piedmont, SC.

We were very careful to keep things like cereal boxes, pancake mix, and flour inside plastic containers in our cabinets so bugs would not get in them.

After a while, I started finding bugs on the shelves and around the tops of the containers.

We used bug spray around the house, but the bugs kept appearing.

But all I ever saw were dead bugs.

So one day I put a couple of dead bugs on a napkin and called a local exterminator for advice.

I was talking to the service lady as I closely examined the bugs, describing our problem: “We have these bugs getting into our cabinets, and they are even trying to eat through the containers. But all I ever see are dead ones, and it looks like they curl up in a little ball when they die because I can’t see any legs on them.”

I hope you have a clear picture in your mind of me holding a napkin up to my face with 2 or 3 little “dead bugs” on it while I poke them around with a pencil.

“Sir,” she replied, “You don’t have bugs. You have mice, and those are their droppings!”

“Oh,” I managed to mutter after an awkward silence.

I am just so glad I was on the phone and not talking to her in person!

God has so much to teach us about life.

But many of His lessons will only be learned from experience.

Next Week: Now thank we all our God

Dan Williams is the senior adult pastor at Lexington Baptist Church.