Jake & the berry quandary
“I don’t know how we will do this mommy!” Jake said when I asked him “How will we get across the bridge without staining our shoes with all those berries?”
The other ways to cross to our home were through the creek which was muddy or to walk a half of a mile down the street. We decided to take our chances and tip toe through the berries and just try not to squish too many. When we found ourselves on the other side we wiped our feet in the dew covered grass and then across the road. The berry juice did not set into our shoes. Mission accomplished!
In the journey of our lives we often come across berried bridges and muddy or lengthy alternatives. In that moment when faced with the possibility of stains to not only our shoes but our hearts and our minds we must make snap decisions. Depending upon how many times we have been stained or how successfully we have tiptoed through the berries of our lives we will decide which is the best course of action. Many of us would rather take the long way around some of us would rather get muddy because that will wash off easier. How many of us take that chance and try carefully to maneuver our way around the berries?
The past is over yet the stains that have been left from losses, heart break and failure seem to bleed through on a daily basis. From those stains we grow and learn more about what we can handle and how we can love more fully. Many of us close up after such difficult times and cut ourselves off from the path all together but that is not healing, that is standing in the berries and continuing to squash them endlessly. We must walk through the pain it takes time but we all need to move on to the other side and learn from the past. The past forms our choices but it is all perspective did you see those berries as a stain of sorrow and heartache to be set in for a lifetime or did you see that stain as one of many that would form new colors in your life making you in the end a complete person who has grown from it all?
The past is over the future is out of our reach the present is what we can live right now. What lessons have you learned and how has the past made you who you are today?
“How will you get through the berries to get home today?”
