A Mini-Lesson from "The Secret Life of Bees"

One of my favorite parts of summer is sitting down with a good book, and by good I mean something other than a textbook for a change. The first book on the docket this year is The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. I'm currently only about halfway through, but am thoroughly enjoying the story. I wanted to post just a tiny piece of it that really spoke to me tonight and encouraged me to refocus on where my priorities are:

"How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?"

She laughed. "That was May's doing. She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, 'Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.'"

"All this time I just figured you liked pink," I said.

She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over-all scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart -- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is --"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."




Sometimes I just love the way a book can speak wisdom into your life. A book can be a gentle message from a friend, or it can hit like a Mack truck, but in the end it hits, and that's what's important. Looking forward to a summer filled with many more lessons like this one. :o)

Pre-Wedding Bug...

Bleh. I don't like feeling sick. It's not bad-sick...just a nagging cold. It all started the night of graduation when I got this amazing peach soda at Red Robin. I really, really liked it and was excited for my mom to try it as well. I neglected the fact that my mom had a cold and offered my straw (I mean, I had just graduated college. I was invincible, right? Hehehe.) Well, it turns out I wasn't. Invincible, that is. I got the cold sometime last week and now my voice is on the fritz. For the first time in my life I'm actually worrying about when it will come back. It would be so sad if I had to whisper my vows in 3 1/2 weeks! I'm also trying really hard to regain the 10 lbs. that mysteriously melted away over the course of spring semester. Of course...this is being hindered by the fact that all this drainage is making me sick to my stomach and taking away my appetite. Bleh.

A Trustworthy God

Over the past few weeks, God has been placing people and circumstances in my life that have been teaching me a lot about trusting Him to provide the right things at the right times. The most recent example of this, of course, has to do with graduating from college. In this first week of "adulthood" I have been stressed out, burdened down, and altogether a worrying mess about how I'm going to find a job, how Jesse and I are going to make it on our own, etc. Some of these fears, I have felt, were well-grounded, others not so much. Regardless of the roots of these fears, one piece of advice has arisen in every conversation I have had about them. "Trust God, and wait on His perfect timing."

It was honestly (and sadly) ridiculously difficult for me to do this, and I had to spend a lot of heart-felt prayer time asking God to help me trust...which seems kind of silly if you think about it (I know academically that He is totally trustworthy, but I still need help living out any sort of belief in that?). Regardless, He was faithful, and helped me to open up to my parents about how afraid I was about upcoming life...which was a big deal...because I don't generally tell people about the things that I worry about. It turns out, parents can be an amazing support system, and sometimes just having them there and knowing that they know you're afraid actually sets them up to give you the courage to press on. So side lesson: parents can be a much bigger blessing than we often realize (and they don't think you're dumb for wondering how you're going to make it!!!).

Anyway, I side-tracked. What I wanted to say was that after all this learning to actually trust God business (and not just saying it), He very faithfully provided for us! In the rough-cut budget we had worked out, there was a specific amount short that we were falling on our monthly allowances, and I was really worried about this. God was so amazing as to bless me with a housekeeping position that will work around any potential future nursing positions for that exact amount! I was basically floored. And then just to put the cherry on top, I had another offer to do some work for someone too. As if He hadn't already blessed us enough! Sometimes I think God just likes to amaze us and then sit back and laugh because He knew He was capable all along. (sigh) Sometimes I'm amazed at just how small the capacity of this human mind is... :o)