Thinning the Peaches

 

I would not describe myself as a girl oozing with metaphors but I've got one for you today.

This past spring, life was hectic.  I don't like hectic.  I like peaceful.  I like staying at home.  I like lists.  I like schedules.  I like an open calendar.  It seemed that my calendar was filled with things and I was scrambling to get in our normal home school day.  Naps were skipped sometimes and usually resulted in miserable, irritable evenings (her and me!).

So onto the metaphor...

This is our peach tree in our fruit garden.  We planted it several years ago and it was just a stick with roots when we got it in the mail.  A few years later it was filled with delicious, juicy, sweet peaches which we enjoyed well into the winter from our freezer.

Then last year the peaches oozed with snotty-looking gross stuff and worms.  Some stinkin' varmits found a home in each flower bud and ruined each succulent fruit.  I was pretty mad.  Not a single peach to enjoy.

This year we decided to save the peaches and spray pesticide faithfully on our tree.

Do you see what we have now??  

But one painful part of this process is when the branches get too over-laiden with fruit, they will break if you don't pick off baby peaches and throw them away to lighten the load and make room for growth.  That's a hard thing to do, especially after last year of having to buy peaches.

But it made me think about my spring.  All the running around and things on my calendar were all good things.  Ways to serve others.  Involvement in our Christian school.  Going to field trips with my kids and attending their performances and chapels.  Working on paperwork for our adoption home study.  Reading books that my friends just authored.  All good stuff.  It just was that sometimes too much of that good stuff can make life crowded so that the things you do aren't as sweet because there's too much of it.  My attitude wasn't always one of service as I sought to serve others because it was crammed between a double header baseball game.  Had I thinned my commitments a little, it would have made for a sweeter Mama, a cleaner house, better meals, more energy for My Man and happier children.

Sometimes I just have to step back and remember my priorities as a homemaker.  

God.  My Man.  My Fish Sticks.  Then the rest.

I can make my home filled sufficiently with ripe, sweet, goodness by keeping my priorities and thinning out when things start to crowd the branches.

Not always easy to do, but much better than small, hard, bland peaches, don't you think?