When Life Gives You Lemons . . .

You  make lemonade.  Right?  Wrong.

Friday night a friend was blindsided by the devastating news that, after 14 years of marriage, her husband has been having an affair and wants a divorce.  Ironically Thursday this same friend had written a blog post about handling life's rough situations.  Saturday morning, before her news was known to all of her friends, her Facebook post started by saying, "Figures I'd post about rolling with the punches and life decided to hand me lemons the next day."

Saturday afternoon I received a message from her in my Facebook messages explaining the situation and my heart broke for her.  I spent most of yesterday in shock and in prayer for this family.

As I was falling asleep last night, my friend and her family heavy on my heart, I started thinking about life and getting an entire lemon tree dumped on you.   I started thinking of the lemon tree in my backyard that exploded last year leaving us over 100lbs of lemons.

Immediately after the first round of picking

 After I looked at this bounty I knew there was no way I was going to be able to use all of those lemons before they went bad.   My 5 year old son and I took his wagon and went door to door asking neighbors if they wanted lemons and giving them away. 

After more picking + going door to door  giving them away

As I was praying for my friend and thinking about our lemon tree explosion I started thinking that, instead of making lemonade, God wants us to cast all our burdens on Him and have others come beside us in prayer when we're going through difficult seasons in life.   In other words . . . when life gives us lemons we need to give them away :)



By the way, by the looks of our tree, we're going to have another bountiful harvest this winter so I'll be more than happy to share my lemons with you :)