It’s been four weeks since the last blog. I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my calendar! Since the last blog on May 13, 2019, I’ve spent time with family and friends, attended a high school graduation of an amazing young woman, played a little tennis, spoke at a Spirit-filled women’s event at the RB4 Event Center with THE A-mazing Kat Arnold, celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary, spoke at a grief-connection group, and had a “minor surgical procedure”. Yes, I’ve been busy the last month, that’s for sure!
Although busy, the last month didn’t look like I had planned. During the busy-ness, our Internet decided it wanted to go out-of-commission at the same time I had to “rest”. Oh, I had planned to be “productive” during my “rest” and whittle away at my “to-do” list. It was going to be very good to be ahead of the game when I had completed my “rest”. Oh, what great plans I had!
Well, when the Internet doesn’t work, you can’t go anywhere, AND the Microsoft software needs to be updated before you can work off-line (and you’re oblivious to what that EVEN means), you can begin to feel stuck, unproductive, and useless. By the way, the cable was out, too. No cable and Internet meant I couldn’t even “binge-watch” mindless TV programs. Everybody’s at work, and I was stuck. To top it all off, last week, during my rest, torrential rains and severe weather came calling in my neighborhood. “Surreal” is the best way I could describe looking out into my backyard and seeing water collected in the same place and pattern it did in August 2016 when our home flooded, as did our neighborhood and community!
Once I realized how much rain had fallen and was STILL falling, I called to check on Tim and Isabella who were both on the road during this rain event. While I am talking to Isabella, I noticed my big golden-doodle, Macheaux, jump back. Upon further investigation, I see a “large worm” on my floor. Wait! Worms don’t have tongues and dart at large animals. Worms don’t coil up and strike! WAIT! A baby snake is IN my house at the same moment water is creeping in my backyard AND my Tim and Isabella are driving in this flood?!?! I “may” have screamed like a little school girl and danced around while hyperventilating!!! Just saying… I had a “moment”! I had “a” moment for only for a moment, though. I stepped back, breathed, prayed, and took care of my business…AND that baby snake! I gained a new perspective and remembered back on May 18th when I spoke at that women’s event about making lemonade with the lemons Life so easily gives. I decided to take this information to heart. So, I made lemonade the rest of the day.
What good lemonade it was! With this new perspective of my new lemonade, I was able to spend time with Isabella and other family members, meditate on the goodness and sovereignty of God, catch up on some reading, and “taste and see that the Lord is good”. No, I didn’t get to blog each week, nor did I finish the E-book. I didn’t get my calendar updated or develop a marketing plan. In previous times, I would have considered this month to be “unproductive”, quite possibly a “waste of time”. Not anymore. No, this has been a good month. I chose to enjoy some lemonade on those hot, sticky days. I think this lemonade provided me the energy, clarity, and anticipation needed to spring forth into this summer.
I want to share some things I reflected on AFTER my “moment”. In preparing for the lemonade talk, I googled “lemons”. I discovered lemons are obviously important. On the day of my “Google search”, there were 721,000,000 entries. That’s over 700 million entries about LEMONS! The top entry that day discussed the six evidenced-based health benefits of, you guessed it LEMONS! I read on … lemons have been proven to support heart health, weight control, prevent kidney stones, protect against anemia, reduce cancer risks, and improve digestive health. My next thought was, how like our God to remain true to His word and take something so sour, so pungent, and so powerful as a lemon and turn it for our good! Romans 8:28 tells us that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. I dug deeper about the power of lemons. I discovered how the sense of smell, specifically the scent of lemon, is tightly connected with reducing depressive symptoms. Just smelling lemons makes us feel better! What a simple example of Romans 8:28. Something as sour as a lemon has been proven by science to be beneficial to our well-being and a source of enjoyment!
After my “moment”, I accepted the fact [again]: we are just going to have lemons in our lives. Sometimes, we can handle the lemons as they come, like the last month for me. It is during those times we only have one or two in our refrigerator waiting to be used. Then, there are times a lemon truck dumps its load in our driveway! We may find we have way too many lemons to handle and we must do something with them! Lemons will rot and become an EVEN BIGGER problem if we don’t do something with them. I had an overabundance of lemons delivered to me over a three-month span in 2016. It’s taken me almost three YEARS to use them all and get my lemonade recipe “just right”. By the way, I’m still working on my lemonade recipe AND I diffuse lemon most every day in my home.
It’s during those time, we must “embrace the lemons”! Believe God! Trust He will turn these lemons into something refreshing and sweet in HIS own time. I Googled “lemonade” and was shocked to find over 41 MILLION entries for lemonade! There are many types of lemonade with various ingredients to suite your individual taste. This prompted me to think even deeper. How like God to turn sour lemons into refreshing lemonade specifically tailored to our tastes, or needs, at the time! Here’s another caveat to God creating our lemonade for us … we don’t have to make our lemonade alone. There are people along the way to help us!
I’ve learned a lot about lemonade-making, here’s the top four:
- We WILL be given lemons, even when we don’t want them,
- We MUST find the perfect ingredients, so our lemonade is suited to our own tastes and needs,
- We DON’T have to make it alone, there are those who will help us, and
- We must FIND the perfect recipe, by trial and error and tasting it all along the way until it’s “just right”
Making lemonade requires gaining a new perspective, discovering our needs, reaching out and receiving help from others, and developing resilience until we succeed at the perfect lemonade!
It’s good to be back on the mend and finding my groove sipping on a tall glass of lemonade in hand.
I’m very excited about a few things. One of which is an e-book I’m working on. Be looking soon for information about ways you can access this short book about my personal journey unlocking the keys to thriving after being shook to the core.
Enjoy making lemonade and THRIVE!
Stephanie