Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Soaking and a little bit of elbow grease....

Two nights ago…I cooked dinner for my sick husband who had come home early from work. (Poor thing, I hate it when he’s sick). I had baked pork, string beans and carrots. I wanted to be sure to be really attentive to Daniel, since he wasn’t feeling well. So I got the string beans and carrots on the stove in separate pots with water to a boil. I left them there, on high temperature (to cook faster, or course) and checked on them once…adding water. I then went back to my husband and thought that they would be fine.

All of a sudden it began to smell really weird …like something was burning. I ran over to the carrots. The water had completely dried up…and the carrots were stuck to the bottom of the pot with black mess all around. BOO. I couldn’t have been away from the pot for more than just a few minutes.

I was amazed at how quickly it burned, without me even seeing it coming. It took MUCH longer to soak the pot, clean it and see if it was even useable at this point. It took 2 or more days of soaking and my husband’s elbow grease to get it back to normal. Surely, we thought we were going to have to throw this damaged pot away.

It hit me square between the eyes in a moment (and I shared it with Daniel then too), that it’s amazing how quickly bad things can happen in our lives…bad choices can be made in moments, accidents happen in moments, bad things can happen to us in just moments…and it takes a lifetime of soaking and ‘elbow grease’ to get our lives healed from that experience that only took moments to affect us. At times, I’m even amazed at how God can heal a heart (body, mind, soul, life and more) that looked as if it was beyond repair.

This is a very basic concept, and at times I think we make it difficult. God can truly take something bad that happened to us in only moments and restore it and make it worthy of use, love, healing, a testimony to change others and more.

Just a thought.

6 comments:

E said...

I did that with Apple Cider one time. It smelled nasty!!!

Unknown said...

Hot dogs!! It's easier to do than you would think! Thanks for the great analogy Candice...I love visiting your site. Chris and I want to have you and Daniel over for dinner sometime soon!

GE is me said...

Candice, profound as usual. Thanks for sharing & I hope Daniel is feeling better.
God Bless, -Gail

Nika said...

Very true. Candice-I love how you simply keep it real.

Hope that Daniel is feeling better.

Kendall {mommy bean} said...

Thank you for posting this Candice. We really needed to hear this today, we got a call Monday that has changed our lives but it's nice to be reminded that God can & will make something great out of it.

Candice of 'The Beautiful Mess' said...

thank you for all of your kind words...

kendall...I pray all is well for you and brad...

beth-we'd love that! hope you had a great week!

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