fancypantsnurs replied to your post: Soooo, my room smells like myrrh.

Hi, want to say I had the opportunity to venerate that same myrrh streaming icon of the Theotokos when it arrived in our city,i have a qtip soaked in the myrrh and paper icon copy, very cool to read about this in tumblr land :) will keep ur mom in prayers

After talking to my dad, it turns out that I actually have seen and venerated that icon as well! It was brought to the Serbian parish next door (Yeah, there are Serbian Orthodox and Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox churches right next to each other…), and Father and Papadyia invited us over to reverence the icon.

A few months later, the same icon visited a parish in my diocese located in Taylor, PA. After coming into contact with the Hawaiian icon, two different icons located in the parish and the rectory began weeping as well. I drove my parents out to Taylor, PA from Jersey to see those icons, where we were able to reverence the icons and were also anointed with their oil.

These two icons were brought to the New Jersey Deanery’s Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers, so I was able to see these icons once again. I have a copy of the icon that began to weep in Taylor that I carry around with me in my bag at all times. It was actually the first icon I looked at when I verified that I was not hallucinating the myrrh scent. Then - after checking the other icons in my room - I check the paper duplication of the Hawaiian icon that was downstairs.

The scent is still around. Not as strongly as it was at first, but every once in awhile, there’s a wave of the scent where it’s very strong, but then it wanes away again. It’s a little maddening, but the scent is comforting.

And thank you for keeping my mother in your prayers. I appreciate it! :)

Soooo, my room smells like myrrh.

And I have no idea why.

So I’m sitting at my computer looking something up and all of a sudden I’m hit with this wall of the scent of myrrh.

Let me back up a bit.

Earlier today, I went next door to the rectory of the Serbian Orthodox Church next door to talk to them about using their hall for the Bowling Tournament that we’re hosting next year. Papadiya and I got to talking, and we discussed how my mother is having surgery to remove a kidney stone tomorrow.

When Father came into the house, he gave me a bit of oil from the Myrrh Streaming Icon of the Mother of God from Hawaii and a paper duplicate of the icon to give to her, along with the assurance of his prayers.

So when I smelled it, I figured my dad was just anointing my mother in the next room. But when I walked there, I found her sitting alone on her bed rubbing unscented lotion into her hands.

I beckoned her out into the hallway in order to reassure that I wasn’t going crazy. As soon as she stepped into the hallway connecting our rooms she said, “Where is that smell coming from?”

Obviously, I had no idea, but the scent had very distinct lines of beginning and ending. We eventually called my brother and father out into the hall/my room as well to make sure we weren’t making it up.

There was this endearingly crazy moment where we were all standing in the hallway sniffing at the air, trying to figure out the source of the scent of myrrh.

I ended up smelling and touching every icon I knowingly have in my room, and found nothing out of the ordinary.

At one point I said to my father, “Well, maybe this is God’s way of telling me to clean my room.”

He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Thank you, God.”

So the smell still persists, but I’ll go to bed tonight knowing that God is near me.

And if you have any time, I’d appreciate you keeping my mother, Pani Eleanor in your prayers as she has surgery tomorrow to remove a 1 centimeter kidney stone (I really with that were a typo)

I went to Taylor today and saw two weeping icons.

It’s moments like that which remind me of my faith.

You could smell the myrrh before you even stepped inside the church. Both of the weeping icons were of the Theotokos so there was a very distinct rose-like scent to the oil. A Moleben was served and my dad said that the icons were streaming the entire time.

At the end of the service the parish priest (my dad served alongside him tonight) walked around the nave and poured oil from the icon onto the hands of those inside the church. The oil was just running off the sides.

At the end, we all went up to venerate the icons (inside of their glass cases) and be anointed with the oil.

My jacked still smells like myrrh from just being in the church for so long.

During the service as I was looking around, I saw people of all different faiths. There were people blessing themselves in the Roman Catholic style and those who you could tell weren’t Orthodox, and were probably some kind of Protestant. That didn’t stop them from coming to see the two Wonderworking Icons.

I did have a thought part-way through the service. I wondered just how many people were seated around the church that didn’t really understand what was going on. Mind you, I know that as an Orthodox Christian, I don’t have any better insight into what is going on - God works in mysterious ways that I’m not meant to understand - however, there were some people that I was getting upset by because they were reaching out their hands and clamoring with cotton balls to get some oil. It just really upset me.

However, the overall experience made up for it. It was something I won’t soon forget.