When life gives you lemons...

Diane and I are going through something of a waiting period. It seems to be one of those waits in the hallway between one door closing and the next one opening. We are both confident the second door will open. It’s just that neither of us are really that into hallways. Or waiting.

While she was visiting Florida in July, the lemons on the tree in my back yard were growing larger, seemingly by the day. We chose one of the more mature lemons and determined that when it ripened, it would be the sign that the next phase of our life would be ready to start. It would signal that the second door through which we were intended to walk would open.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the lemonade...

Hurricane Irma rolled through Florida on September 10-11, wreaking havoc on virtually the entire state. (Note: See the link at the end if you would like to donate to Hurricane Irma or Harvey relief.) Families evacuated, vacations were cut short, homes and businesses were destroyed, even lives were lost in the path of what has been called the largest Atlantic hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States.

Needless to say, those of us in North Florida didn’t suffer nearly the destructive effects of the storm as did our neighbors to the south. In fact, I didn’t even lose power. I lost some branches that had to be cut up and hauled to the street but I have only gratitude for my blessings.

As dawn broke the morning after the storm, I went outside and noticed lemons on the ground. Dozens and dozens of lemons, in various stages of ripeness, were strewn across the backyard, in the grass and in the mud, all courtesy of Irma.

Reflexively, I looked up in the tree for “our” lemon, the lemon which, when ripened, would announce the arrival of our new life.

I looked in the usual place in the tree, the spot framed by branches that I had hoped would have provided protection from the weather.

Our lemon was not there.

I then looked to the ground, almost afraid of what I’d find.

Our lemon had not survived the storm.

Silly though it may sound, my breath caught in my chest for just a moment. I feared that the future we had planned was somehow now in jeopardy because “our” lemon had not been afforded the opportunity to grow.

But as my wits came to me and I laughed at my own foolishness, I noticed something about “our” lemon.

While it had begun ripening on the tree, I had not been able to see the back of it. As it lie in the mud on the ground the morning after the storm, however, I noticed that on what had been the backside was a bit of rot. The lemon we had chosen (randomly, might I add) as “ours” would never have been an actual edible fruit. Before it ripened, it would have rotted on the tree.

I stopped to think of whether there might be a lesson in this. Maybe the plan that we had come up with was the wrong plan. Maybe we needed to consider other possibilities besides the ones we had conceived.

So I started looking around the tree for other lemons that might signal our new beginning, mine and Diane’s.

On the far side of the tree, away from the patio, was a cluster of lemons. We had simply misread the signals the Universe had been sending us and one of these lemons would be harbinger of our future!

But a closer look at these lemons revealed they were actually not very good. They might ripen but the fact that they were already large, but lumpy and mottled, meant that they would likely never bear any juice. One in particular caught my eye -- the lowest hanging of the fruit -- but it, too, appeared as though ripening would not result in a fruit worth having.

As I began to wonder if we had put too much stock in the ripening of a lemon as an indicator of our destiny (we had), I sat down in the patio chair. Apparently there wasn’t going to be a lemon that would portend our future. I was just being stupid. I even wondered for a moment if this was the Universe’s way of telling me that our plans, mine and Diane’s, would never come to fruition.

Just as I began to give up on the idea that God would give us such an obvious signal, something caught my eye. Up in the tree, protected from the storm and almost invisible from the ground, was a lemon. It hung very near where “our” original lemon had hung, but this one remained in place.

This lemon was nestled in the branches, protected from the wind, and almost perfectly smooth. I checked the back and there was no indication of rot or any other deformity.

By all objective measures, it appeared to be the perfect lemon. The only thing about it that wasn’t perfect is that it hadn’t yet ripened. But that would come. All in God’s time.

So I guess the moral of this story is that sometimes we have plans in our life. They can be good plans, exciting plans, even plans to bring goodness into the world.

But sometimes those plans are usurped by things like...hurricanes. Plans that we hold dear might not be God’s plans at all and they wind up in the mud.

In hindsight, however, we are able to see that our plans were flawed. Even still, we want to cling to our imperfect plan rather than to wait for God’s perfect one. Then, when our plans are uprooted by storms (metaphorical or otherwise), we instinctively and immediately start making other plans. Sometimes we look for the easy way, the low-hanging fruit (to belabor the metaphor) but we often find that easy doesn’t necessarily equate to good.

But in life, as in lemon watching, sometimes you have to give up trying to make things happen and let God reveal to you what His perfect plan is.

Sometimes, that perfect plan is a lemon. And when it is, all we have to do is sit back and watch it unfold.

If you would like to donate to Hurricane Irma relief, I recommend you read this article from the New York Times first. It will help you choose a good charity while avoiding scams. 

And let's not forget about Hurricane Harvey relief. Our brothers and sisters in Texas haven’t yet had their lives made whole, either.