It’s a stupid phrase really. And it’s not one I’ve really ever paid much attention to. I’m sitting here waiting to board my flight to Lucy and that silly idiom keeps filling my mind. It won’t go away.
“When life gives you lemons…”
For three months, our wider family, have harvested much yellow oval, thick skinned, acid bombs!
Sour doesn’t do justice to the lamenting film that lingers on our palates. Our taste receptor cells, type III, are just about to call a culinary strike! They have endured the tangy taste of the murder of Mark’s dear cousin, my sweet Daddy’s struggle with Alzheimers, a brother with a brain hematoma, and the recent postponement of our 7 week Israeli Music is Medicine Tour. But the biggest, most fumaric lemon of all (whose size resembles a grapefruit, no, a beachball is even more accurate,) is the devastating diagnosis of leukemia lurking inside of our beautiful granddaughter, Lucy.
Life has rained down lemons.
What about you? My guess is that you too, have been bonked on the head with the heavy falling fruit.
Sitting here at DIA waiting for a white and blue CRJ to fly me to Northwest Arkansas, I’m mulling over that phrase when I remembered our literal harvest of lemons. Then I found photographic proof.
Lucy Jane Tedder was four years old when she picked her first lemon. The other kids joined in with great enthusiasm. Our son Daniel and gang had landed and settled in at our coffee farm. The Big Island of Hawaii was showing off her citrus harvest and the kids and grandkids had arrived just in time.
We had planted two lemon trees the year before. Both the height of Mark now; one was a Meyer and the other was a variegated Eureka from Hilo. I couldn’t wait to slice open the latter and see its soft pink flesh for myself.
The harvest was so bountiful that Kayla and I juiced lemons until our fingerprints nearly dissolved. It made gallons of sugary sweet lemonade. The kids set up a roadside stand. With the profit margin high, they thrilled at the influx of pocket money.
The Book of John in the New Testament could be the root thinking of our silly lemon phrase. Life will give lemons.
“When life gives you lemons…make lemonade!”
We will experience trouble.
But cry and gnash, then move on. I am choosing this morning to make some delicious, refreshing lemonade!
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
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