What’s the deal with all the lemons?
They just kept falling… tear after tear. My face soaked and eyelashes clumped together, I could no longer feel them sliding down my cheek. Only the cool drops falling off my chin onto my chest alerted me to their continuing.
“Why all the lemons, God?” I asked Him. “Why?” I cried again. “But mostly, even if I never know why, please give me a reprieve.” I begged.
When we ask a question we are usually looking for an answer. (No, really?!) But asking “why?” is more than just seeking an answer; it’s seeking understanding.
Our brains are extremely logical. Reason and rationale formulate our thoughts, and it’s how we learn lessons and progress. Without either, things don’t make sense, and we fail to navigate accurately.
When “shit hits the fan” in our lives, the most obvious next step is to figure out “how” to move forward, past, around, or through whatever difficult circumstances have befallen us. In a post on adversity I described how tension is meant to move us, not to harm us. And it’s more often that not the catalyst for change that we need as we search for ways to relieve its grip on our lives.
“How” to change our circumstances for the better is typically the guiding question. And it’s always founded on what makes most sense and will turn a page in whatever chapter of life we are in, getting us closer to the resolution of the latest drama. How do we make lemonade out of all the lemons in life?
When I was about 10 years old, a friend Holly and I read the book Lemonade for Sal in our elementary class together. Intrigued by the little boy character’s lemonade stand, we set out to create our own version and (ideally) make a bit of pocket money for the summer. No one drove past my house at the very end of the street, but hers was in a much busier neighborhood and made more sense. (Part of the many lemonade business “hows” we needed to work through to optimize our entrepreneurial success that June.)
Nonetheless, on a hot Oklahoma summer afternoon, not too many people are driving by. And opening up the door or window for a tiny paper cup of lemonade meant letting all the air conditioned cool air out while exchanging it within seconds for a blast of 95 degree swelter (and the tiny cup of lemonade, possibly cooled down with one now-melted ice cube). The exchange, though tempting due to fond memories of their own childhoods and the need to be viewed as “good neighbors” before potluck season started, was just too risky. We worked this out (another how), and settled on The Lemonade Wagon instead.
Door to door got much more traction.
I blotted more tears off my worn face and rubbed my puffy eyes. Remembering what I once accomplished with a pile of lemons and counting all the shiny quarters afterwards on the linoleum floor of Holly’s house brought to my exhausted face a cracked smile for a few seconds.
Crying had exhausted me and my search for “how” to overcome another… scratch that… several more incredibly difficult challenges that had just dropped out of nowhere and now buried me in a crying, crumpled pile deep beneath had availed no more answers today than it had yesterday, or the day before, last week, last month, or all of the past few years.
So now I was asking “why?”. No longer “how?”. I was at the crossroads of needing peace more than I needed direction. And I knew I would likely not receive an answer to my question “why?”. But I also knew that this was the direction I needed to lean in for the safety I sought.
When I was ten, we actually bought all the lemons we could on purpose! The phrase about life giving you lemons was blissfully yet unknown to us. But now life seemed to literally rain lemons on me. And I was completely out of sugar. My lemon press had broken. My feet were as worn as the weary traveler. My friends had gone back to their lives. And my lemonade wagon sign in life was barely readable. It was hard for even me to remember what I was doing, let alone hope anyone else would be able to read the situation well enough, and open their door to my crying self.
When we’ve struggled for way too long trying to figure things out with or without seeking Gods insight, or when something so incredibly tragic and unexplainable happens, the need to transverse through a problem or situation takes a back seat to a deeper yearning to understand the meaning behind it all. When we can’t navigate our way out of the storm, nor rely on our own experience or efforts to provide the sense of security our hearts need, our helplessness morphs the questions cried out and we search for a deeper wisdom to it all in attempt to trust that there IS a reason, and our life is not simply left to chance. We often seek God’s face for reassurance only when we tire of seeking His hand for immediate help in our way and in our time.
Regardless of professed faith, most of us believe things in life happen for a reason. Even the reasons that are revealed only after consequences still serve to guide us and mold our lives for the better if we are wise and spend time in contemplation.
Wisdom teaches us to look for and consider the “why’s” when making decisions in life as a way to ensure we are in alignment with what God wills for us and to keep us morally on track. And spiritual maturity enables peace in the presumption that there is always a why and a reason, even when we can’t see or understand it in the moment. But the vast majority of us are continually and exclusively concerned with the “how’s”.
“Why?” isn’t the same as “how?”. It’s usually a LOT MORE DESPERATE. It usually comes when we are well beyond broken. And it usually does not have an immediate answer, if one we are privileged to ever know at all.
But it does mean we have fully resigned. We have revealed our mustard seed of faith. And we believe just enough deep down that there IS a reason for the suffering, that we rest, even just a tiny bit, from our mad scramble.
As I continued to think about the pile of lemons that currently buried me and splashed cold water on my swollen face, I remembered that my husband’s and my mother’s favorite dessert is lemon meringue pie. It takes a whole lot more skill, a whole lot of patience, a whole lot more time, and a whole lot more lemons to make a proper pie than it does to make simple lemonade.
I smiled at myself in the smudged mirror over the sink. Maybe this is where God and me are headed.
