Lemons

 

“Lemons clean everything. It’s the greatest disinfectant.” ~ Sandra Bullock

A lemon is a widely cultivated, bitter fruit with a wide variety of uses for its juice, rind and pulp. Lemons give flavour to baked goods, sauces, drinks and desserts but are rarely consumed alone due to their intense sour taste. The acid content in lemons makes them good as a short term preservative in a variety of dishes.

We recently had a couple of birthdays to celebrate and this time I decided to make a lemon pound cake. I’m glad to report I have a winner and may be coming back to this recipe despite my chronic experimentation tendencies. And hence, everything lemon got me musing about the “got lemons, make lemonade” adage.

It’s been lemon season with a bang in the lives of many people for the last 15 months. And sadly, the lemons keep coming, juicier and sourer. Too much of anything is poison and familiarity breeds contempt so of course lemonade is no longer a tolerable drink! So what to do with all these lemons?

What happens when your season of adversity seems endless and even gets compounded by factors way beyond your control? Where do you run when your short term plans fail because the event you planned for is now running way longer than expected?

Make a pound cake, perhaps? And after the cake? I have no answers, as yet. All I know is I can’t lose faith and I can’t live tomorrow today. I also know that I am not omniscient, I only know what I know which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Neither am I omnipotent, indeed the only power I have cannot even make me take another breath if my lungs fail me. So where does that leave me?

Every day, I choose to fall back on the promise of the one who is all powerful, all knowing, all present. I look around me and see people who are doing better than me and thank God that there is hope that I will be in their shoes one day. I turn around and see others who are doing way worse than I am and I am moved with compassion to offer a prayer for them, despite my long list of yet unsaid prayers.

What form have your lemons taken today? What value addition can you do to make them more palatable? Or would you rather cry all day about it? Look around, everyone has been dealt a sour grape, some much more sour than others. But if you’re still here, don’t let your lemons rot. Turn them into jam, juice or cake. . .anything but rotten fruit.

“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade...and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.” ~ Ron White

 “Life handed me lemons, so I made lemonade, lemon cake, lemon drops, and I even used the rinds to make lemon art. So, the joke is on you, life, haha!” ~ Emilyann Allen

 

Bonus: Recipe for the lemon pound cake I made.

Comments

  1. BTOMay 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM

    "I choose to fall back on the promise of the one who is all powerful, all knowing, all present."
    He's the only rock we can fall back on. He'll always be there through thick and thin.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kui GathuaMay 21, 2021 at 9:14 PM

      Indeed, to who else can we go? He is the one who is the truth.

      Delete

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