Time and Patience: Lessons from the Ice

For most of my formidable childhood and youth, the sport that captured my heart, my time and my devotion was one that taught discipline, grace, preparing, repetition, and a lot of bruising.  The ice was not kind or gracious when one fell, but every morning and afternoon my blades would cut and carve designs into it, making deep sounds and spraying ice with it.  Sometimes I would end up on the ice more than I would have liked, but you can't stay there.  You've got to pick yourself up, trying again, and again, and again.  Other times, all that would touch were the delicate and fiercely sharp edges of the thin silver blade that was attached with eight screws below my leather boot. That's when the ICE and the BLADE become an art form, dancing together in a highly unlikely and beautiful fashion.  

Right now the ICE represents TIME, and the BLADE represents PATIENCE: waiting, and everything I once learned half a lifetime ago.  In one week, the children start school, and we have yet to know which school they will be attending in our new city (as we wait for circumstances).  My like-to-plan-way-in-advance brain is trying to settle with the reality that TIME is not on my side, and I have no control over it.  PATIENCE is in my control, and I can do as much planning as earthly possible but there is still an element of waiting and not knowing.  I don't like it as much as I didn't like tripping over my toe pick while doing a spiral and ending up with a thud on my hipbone.  But in order for me to allow PATIENCE to do its work, I must let go, get off the cold ice, and lean into the edge that will draw me closer to the purpose of all of this.  In the midst of the unknown on many different levels, I do have a peace.  I know the Lord's formation in our family at this moment is more important than the circumstances surrounding us, and yet I do know that He cares about our needs and the childrens' needs, and I rest in that.  It's hard, but that's okay.  As long as perspective is kept, TIME and PATIENCE can dance in perfect rhythm, resting in the knowledge that all will be well. 

Bruised Yet Sweet...A Lesson from a Peach

    

 
     One of the joys of Northwest living is picking our own fruit.  Blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries have overflowed our fridge and freezer, and the conglomerations of recipes we've made with these fruits has been beyond scrumptious.  But the fruit that has showed me my own heart is the peach. 
      We drove 15 minutes to a rural orchard symmetrically lined with peach trees that were heavy with luscious fruit.  With our box in hand on this warm day, we started feeling the fuzzy, yellow fruit to make sure that it was just right and ready to be picked.  We wanted to make sure and not get the ones that were rotten, too long on the tree, or had already fallen on the hard ground.  At least, that's what I told the kids.  But as I looked at this one peach that seemed to be quite ripe, a bit bruised and about to fall off the fingers of the branch that were holding it and onto the well-trodden ground below, I gazed long and hard at it.  I thought: if I don't give it a chance, who will?  Why do we discard the bruised fruit so quickly when we haven't even seen the inside of it?  We judge a book by its cover.  We determine it can't possibly be sweet and delicious.
       We paid for our box full of sweet peaches, and I eyed my special one.  This bite was for all of those who had given me a chance.  For those who hadn't given up on me.  And for all of those special, treasured people in my life who aren't perfect, but who make my life sweeter, tastier, more special and meaningful. And for grace, that perfect, undeserved gift that has been extended to those who accept it as their own.  If it weren't for God's grace, we would all be discarded, trampled on the ground.

As I bit into this chosen peach, it was absolutely delicious, and I thought of all those sweet peaches in my life.  I enjoyed the savory flavor all the more!

From the tree to the oven to our tastebuds!