When Life Gives You Too Many Lemons

Once upon a time, a friend who loves puns as much as I do (I know, you didn't know this person existed) asked if I wanted to put on signs that said "LIFE" and hand out lemons and limes on BYU's campus.

This was after I said we should catch ducks and go give "INTRODUCKTIONS" to strangers, so since clearly his plan violated fewer animal rights, we went with that one.

For the most part, it was a great success and we felt good about life and people giggled and asked if they could take pictures of us and yeah basically this is something that is only acceptable on a college campus or in a Buzzfeed article.

But here's the thing: people were delighted to receive citrusy fruits from us only because we didn't pelt them with 487 lemons and scream "BET YOU CAN'T MAKE THAT MUCH LEMONADE!!"

Okay, that was too broad of statement. They were enchanted with our practical application of word play AND we caused them no harm by throwing excess produce at them.

And here's the other thing: sometimes real life gives us 487 lemons and we think we should be able to make some sort of lemonade out of those but that also requires scores of cups of sugar that you don't actually and what the crap are you supposed to do with all of that beverage anyways AND SOMETIMES THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY LEMONS.

Today someone at church brought up the belief that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, and to an extent, I suppose that's true.
(if you're still stuck on the lemonade metaphor read: "Life will never give us more lemons that we need for the perfect lemonade.")
More true though is that actually sometimes God does give us more than we can handle and even enough to break us.
(read: "Too many lemons.")

And when we break, we can break hard.
Shattered.
In pieces.
Hurting hard on the ground.

(read: "being crushed by the scores and scores of lemons pelting you from the sky.")

Just because life breaks you from time to time though doesn't mean you're shattered forever.
What I do believe is that when God gives us more than we can handle, he gives us the chance to build up something beautiful.

This house is literally made from lemons and oranges.

Beauty from ashes so to speak. 

(read: "when you're being squashed by lemons and are buried underneath them for days and weeks, there will be an escape and you will find the least offensive lemons and maybe build a beautiful lemon fortress that serves the whole of humanity even though lemons were never meant to be constructive material but what else were you supposed to do and besides build?")




Life gives us lemons. 
Sometimes it's easy to make lemonade from them.
Sometimes those lemons are too sour or there are too many and we simply can't.
And we crack.
And we are buried for a little bit.

But the future promises hope and healing and better days. 

So you have to get creative with your occasional abundance of lemons and just go to town because we're not meant to be broken forever.

So when life gives you lemons, what are you going to do?

This literally has nothing to do with this blog but made me laugh really hard so here it is.