Life With Lemons

In the last post I published about my new home, I ended with how happy I was in my beautiful place and how I felt that God had an assignment for me here in my new community. (See "Home of My Unimagined Dreams")

And then I left you hanging, with a hint that I had a totally unexpected adventure on the horizon.

Yes.

Adventure first. Assignment later.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

But I don’t like lemonade. In fact, I don’t like lemon anything. Not even the best lemon pie on earth that one of my cousins makes. Not even lemon in iced tea or water, or lemon bars or lemon cookies that others think are wonderful.

Since I don’t like lemons, I have no desire to drink lemonade, much less go through the trouble of making lemonade.

"When life gives you lemons…" Hmmm. Maybe I’ll make fruit punch. I’ll take the situation that gave me a nice sized basket of bright yellow lemons, and I’ll add strawberries and bananas and apples and grapes and oranges, enough to cover the lemon taste, and I’ll make a nice, yummy fruit punch.

Right. Except... The lemons that life gives are like lemons on steroids, tasting extra strong and sour. Overpowering the sweetness of the other fruits.

But it’s all good. Because I have chosen to make peace with lemons, and in my most recent adventure, I tried my best to acquire a new way to taste them. A new perception. A new perspective. A different mindset.

God gave me a new adventure because I don’t need to go too long without having one. You know, that would be boring. Which would be just fine with me, but you can’t learn and grow well in boredom. So I tend to have unique and exciting adventures, none of which I would ever choose. I think just maybe because I love routine and predictability so much, sometimes God will have me face a situation that shakes things up, perhaps to remind me that He is in control, and my futile attempts to control my world are just that – futile.

I suppose that no matter how we try not to, we all live with a wide variety of expectations. We tend to think that little things we take for granted will always be the same. Or we just assume some things will work out in a particular way, when we don’t even realize we are making assumptions. Or… sometimes we need to learn more about how some things really are vs. how we think they are.

In light of these ideas, one very early morning several months ago when I woke up at 3:30am, I expected to put my bare foot down on soft new carpet as I was getting up. But that idea flew out the window when instead, my foot met with a very wet surface. As in completely saturated carpet. It was a gut punch feeling. I literally gasped in shock. My plans to be out of bed very briefly and then get back into the inviting softness and comfort for more sleep went away immediately, and I found myself barefooted in a robe with an umbrella out on my atrium patio in heavy rain and high winds removing the cover from my storm drain, where leaves had blown in to sit on top of it and block the drain. I pulled the drain cover off and then waited and watched the water that was above my ankles recede. I expected the water to only be in the rooms that had access to the patio through sliding glass doors. That seemed logical to me, that my bedroom and the breakfast area would have some water. What I discovered was that the kitchen and living room had standing water as well. I expected that this situation was not too bad, because though there was evidence of standing water in most every room in the house, it was only a little water, not a high volume of water. Not anything like what so many experienced with Hurricane Harvey here in the Houston area in 2017. Instead, it was like puddles on your driveway after a hard rain. I learned the hard way (is there any other way?) that a little water can do a lot of damage. I expected that the water remediation company would come in, do their thing, and be done within a few hours. After all, I have a small home. I fully expected that I would make my much anticipated dinner plans with a girlfriend with no problem. Ummm…no. They worked about 9 hours that first day, and then came back the next day and worked another 7-8 hours. I expected that since I didn't have a high volume of water, there would be a small amount of drying equipment needed and it's duration would be brief. What happened was that I had a total of 20 pieces of equipment in my 1200 sq ft home and I got to listen to it continually for four long days. I expected that the noise from the drying equipment would be experienced like any white noise. I was surprised to learn how stressful the continual noise was. The only thing I can think of to describe it is to say that maybe it was like standing right in front of Niagara Falls 24/7 for 4 days. It dominated everything. I love a little white noise when I sleep, but this was way over the top. I didn't realize how stressful it was until the first day they came to inspect to see how things were drying out and they turned off the equipment briefly to do that. The quiet was wonderful, until they turned the remaining equipment back on. I was so happy when they finally picked it all up for good.

Bottom line, most all of my initial expectations of how this event would impact me were sadly flawed.

Instead of bright and homey decor inside my new living space, I ended with very rustic décor for quite some time that included concrete floors and flood cut walls. And I ended up having a new experience dealing with not homeowner’s insurance, but flood insurance through FEMA. I learned the significance of the phrase "rising water". So thankful that I had flood insurance because I was not required to have it but got it years ago as a precaution.

And… this adventure was on a special level. Because I spent some time with concrete floors including the bathrooms, I discovered that I had an adventure within an adventure. A shower leak from my newly renovated shower where the water was leaking out from under the shower onto the concrete. This turned out to be a very complicated issue that would require completely renovating the newly renovated shower. But on the bright side, had I not been on concrete floors, I would not have known about this leak until it had been a problem long enough to create more serious issues.

A dear friend reminded me that I never do much of anything halfway, and that includes my adventures. Truth. This adventure just turned out to be multilayered. All my adventures are special, and this one was no exception.

I think it’s in my various adventures where I am reminded of what really matters and while this particular adventure has included hassles and inconveniences and stress, in the bigger picture I have all I need and more. Because God is good. Always.

During this escapade, I just kept reminding myself that all this is just stuff. It wasn’t life threatening. It was just some of the hassles of living everyday life. And I had a choice as to how I would respond to every curve on this path. I definitely didn’t do it perfectly, but I did my best to continually remember to choose to count my blessings and thank God and know that He has a purpose for everything and He wastes nothing. I swept my concrete floors and wiped stuff down often to make my home as livable as I could. And I reminded myself frequently that it was a temporary situation.

I tried to maintain a positive outlook, but I did have my moments of wondering why, because God orchestrated everything for me to purchase this new home, and I chose everything for the renovation that the previous owner, an investor, did before he sold the home to me. And I moved in and thought that was that. All done. I enjoyed everything about my new home. But for some reason, God chose to allow me to enjoy the home for only a few months, and then turn my world upside down. This made no sense at all.

But you know what I learned? That’s OK. After the initial shock, I tried to acclimate to this new perception of my very different looking home, and while I’ll probably never know why this happened, I want to grow through this to trust God more. God's ways are not our ways (Is 55:9). I've seen this truth in my life at various times. I can add one more time here.

Some sour flavor in life is not a bad thing. It helps you appreciate the sweetness. I think I'll go have some lemonade now. I've learned that lemons have their own unique beauty and flavor.