When God gives you bumpy lemons you make lemonade

When life gives you lemons you make lemonade. 

(Lemons from the Dominican Republic, I don’t know why they are bumpy)

We hear so many different variations of this phrase but the fact is, it can be very true.  One of the things I’ve been learning lately is to take whatever task is set in front of me and do it, whether I want to do it or not; changing my attitude to a cheerful one and choosing to see the fun in it. Something you might not know about me is that I have mild Automysophobia. This basically means I have the fear of being dirty. Even when I was little, if I spilled on my food tray while eating I would cry until my tray was cleared of any crumbs in order for me to continue eating.

Several times on the race I have had to “get over” the idea of being dirty in order to finish a task set before me.  One afternoon in my first country, Haiti, we went to the school in Jubilee to help clean and pick up trash.  Jubilee is considered a place where everyone in the nearby city, Gonaives, can dump their trash.  I’m all fine and dandy to pick up trash but when I found out there were no gloves or rakes, I hesitated.  My mind had a million thoughts, how long had this trash sat here? Where had it been?  What is this unidentifiable thing I am looking at?  Then another thought crossed my mind, “What am I doing here? Maybe God has put me in this situation to bless others while in the process of overcoming something for myself.”  So yes, I did do it. I picked up that trash and made a game out of it.  Thanks mom for always trying to make work fun, your 22 year old is still using that mentality after years of practice.

 The funny thing is, just when we think we have something figured out, God brings it up again because we need to work on it some more.  This is also something God is teaching me while on my race.

For my second month, I was in the Dominican Republic. In this month, I lived with my whole squad for the month. We had lots of different jobs throughout the month. One day we had the task of mixing, hauling and pouring concrete.  This job was very messy, concrete is so very hard to get out of clothes, a nightmare for me.  Sigh… It was a job that needed to be done, and everybody needed to pitch in and help out.  So I jumped in and I hauled gritty messy concrete (I did get a little on my clothes).  But I had the privilege of working alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ, the Body, the Church. What a blessing it was to all get dirty for the Lord together!

So in closing, that’s what God and I really worked on in my first two months of my race. I will probably never embrace dirt but God is working on me to overlook it for His Kingdom.  I don’t know what these next months will hold but I am excited to grow with God. I want to take things I find sour and make them good and sweet by changing my attitude. I want to put Him first and let Him work on me and the things I struggle with.