When Life Gives You Lemons Part 1

Writing Prompt Challenge

We’ve all heard the saying that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade but lemonade is on the slightly boring side. We’ve also heard the one that says just add salt and tequila, that one sounds more interesting. What I have noticed though is that sometimes, when life gives people lemons, they tend to use them as weapons and they start using other people as target practice and sometimes those people happen to be those that are nearest and dearest to them.

Then you get those out there that like to lash out at famous people on YouTube and social media as well. I have stopped reading comments due to this very reason. I don’t want to lose more faith in humanity than I already have.

I think that all the popular sayings have it right, when life hands you something that is unpleasant and sour, the best thing to do is try and find the positive in it, try to change the way it affects you and make something else of it. This is not an easy task, trust me. Sometimes you just want to scream into a pillow or punch a wall (although that would create a whole new lemon for you). I think that this is how we train ourselves to be more positive which will help us to face life squarely and without becoming a monster to our family and to everyone out there.

Let me give you and example…my husband had to drive my car for almost two weeks because his car didn’t want to start (we found it was definitely the battery and it’s now fixed, thankfully). He goes to work at 4:30 in the morning and was driving on Malibongwe Avenue when there were bricks all across the fast lane and there was a car in the slow lane next to him so he couldn’t avoid the bricks even though he tried to swerve out. He heard that something was wrong with the tyre and had to stop to change the tyre to my spare tyre, in the dark. All my tyres are only about a month old because he had replaced them for me at the end of January.

Now, he was not happy because it was another thing in a series of things that has been going wrong in our lives and he was a little worried about telling me. When he did tell me, which was basically like giving me lemons, I could have shouted at him and told him that he was driving too fast and has no respect for my stuff which would have made him feel even worse and it would have accomplished nothing positive.

What I did? I took those lemons and made lemon ice cubes. I told him that I was glad that he was safe and that he didn’t roll the car trying to avoid the bricks and that he wasn’t highjacked while standing in the dark and changing the tyre. I told him that the devil would not succeed in upsetting us further. I said that I’m sure that the tyre shop can knock the rim back into place.

What did this do for the situation? It made everyone involved feel better and lighter. It made it easier to look at the situation calmly and see what needed to be done. It kept a smile on my face even in the midst of having to deal with the lemons.

On a daily basis I remind myself that ‘the joy of the Lord is my strength’ (Nehemiah 8:10) and no, remembering this is not a piece of cake. Sometimes it takes work on my part to convince my brain of this. It’s at those times that I put music on and dance around or lose myself in the music and then I usually feel better afterwards.

That is part 1 done and dusted for today. I wanted to try and make the parts shorter so that it’s not too much reading for everyone.

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Enjoy the moments