Sitting in the church pew, all in our Sunday best, my kindergartner points her finger at the words of the hymn. \u00a0I slowly guide her hand so her finger follows along with the worship leaders. \u00a0I notice the dirt underneath her fingernails. \u00a0I glance at my son\u2019s fingers flipping the pages of the Bible as he whispers the order of the books from memory to locate the scripture reading for the sermon. \u00a0His fingernails are dirty as well. \u00a0I inspect mine. \u00a0Yep, dirty. \u00a0Thankfully, for me, the white tips of a recent French manicure hide the dirt. \u00a0It\u2019s odd \u2013 I\u2019m only a tiny bit embarrassed. \u00a0You may think there is no excuse for dirty fingernails. \u00a0We live at a time where there\u2019s probably hand sanitizer of some sort within an arm\u2019s reach of you. \u00a0They come in every shape, size, color and fragrance \u2013 and they\u2019re everywhere, some near your sink and even on your key chains. \u00a0Yes, it\u2019s important to have good personal hygiene. \u00a0But, I like that our children are not afraid to get dirty too. \u00a0Did you know that there are even studies by immunologists and psychologists revealing that getting down and dirty in the outdoors helps children lead healthier, happier lives? \u00a0Some of these studies actually recommend parents go on occasional field trips to farms! \u00a0Well, I say – get a franch! \u00a0I especially like knowing that it isn\u2019t just any old dirt \u2013 it\u2019s garden soil from harvesting vegetables for the day\u2019s meals, it\u2019s dust from grooming the horse, it\u2019s dander from scratching our dogs behind their ears, it\u2019s grain crumbles scooping out feed from the bins. \u00a0Still sitting in the church pew (it’s thankfully a long sermon today), the dirt beneath our fingernails reminds me of my kindergartener\u2019s recent Sunday school lesson. \u00a0It was about how the Lord formed man out of the dust from the ground. \u00a0You see, dirt isn\u2019t so bad after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sitting in the church pew, all in our Sunday best, my kindergartner points her finger at the words of the hymn. \u00a0I slowly guide her hand so her finger follows along with the worship leaders. \u00a0I notice the dirt underneath her fingernails. \u00a0I glance at my son\u2019s fingers flipping the pages of the Bible as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}