At my church, we have these “Meal Groups.”
A meal group is a group of people that get together, pray, share a meal, discuss a book, and we do a service project in the area.
My group got the opportunity to go bowling with the Fraser Friends.
This is a group of mentally challenged adults.
These guys are amazing, but I will save that for a different blog.
So one of the last times we got together, a girl in my group brought one of her friends with.
His name is Mark and he is a pretty sweet dude.
We hung out, talked with the guys from Fraser Friends, and I even got taunted hardcore by Keith (one of the Fraser Friends) every time I left a pin standing.
If you have ever bowled with me, you know that that is every frame.
Afterwards, our group went out to eat.
We went to a little burger place and just got to know each other more.
During a conversation with Mark, I learned that he really loves sand volleyball, which is pretty sweet because I do too.
We started talking about it and eventually we decided that we should get together and play sometime.
A couple weeks back, he gave me a call to get together to play some volleyball.
We ended up playing 2-on-2 sand volleyball for about 3 hours on a Saturday.
It was so hot outside.
The sand was on fire and I ended up wearing socks because it was so hot.
My body took quite the beating for 3 hours and by the time we were wrapping up, I was about ready to fall over because I was so tired.
I had just enough energy to make it over to the lake to fall in and wash all of the sand off of me.
I was pretty hungry after I got out of the water, so Mark and I decided to make the journey to Jimmy John’s (a sub sandwich place).
Mark and I got into a semi deep conversation about a few different things.
One of the topics we discussed was how to respond when life doesn’t go the way you want it to, and he made a comment that I had never heard before.
“The same water that makes an egg hard also makes a potato soft.”
At first, I was like…water…egg…potato…what in the world are you talking about.
But then I started to think about it.
I thought about myself standing in the kitchen just before Easter.
I see my mom there trying to get me and my sister to come participate in the Crimi Easter egg decorating competition.
(We compete in everything we do…gingerbread houses, pumpkin carving…you name it we have a competition for it.)
The first thing we need to do is boil the eggs.
So we fill up a pot with water, put some eggs in the pot, crank the heat, and wait.
Minutes later, the boiling water has turned our eggs into hard boiled eggs.
Then I picture us together as a family on Thanksgiving.
The turkey’s in the oven.
My dad has pumpkin pies ready.
My sisters and I are watching the Turkeyday parade when my parents yell down to us to come help make some smashed potatoes.
We go upstairs, and they tell us to get a pot of boiling water ready.
So we do.
Then they tell us to throw in some potatoes.
Minutes later we have potatoes that are nice and soft.
Now all we need to do is smash them, put them on our plates, and start making sculptures with them (at least I do.)
If you look at both of these situations, we took a pot of boiling water and we threw in either eggs or potatoes.
(I just want to point out that the Crimi’s don’t have special magic water, just regular old tap water.)
But in one case the boiling water makes the egg hard and the other it makes the potato soft.
Isn’t that strange?
How can boiling water make things either hard or soft?
It’s madness if you ask me.
Then I started to relate this back to what Mark and I were talking about.
You know, how we deal with things in life.
How can the same thing happen to two different people and have such different results?
How can one incident make one person’s heart hard, and another person’s heart soft?
Let’s say…one day you get a phone call and [insert really bad news here] just happened.
How are you going to respond?
Obviously right away, you are going to be a little rocked by the news.
That is totally understandable.
But if you fast forward a couple months, what is going to be happening to your heart because of what happened.
In my eyes, we have two options.
We can try to get over it as quickly as possible.
We can try to hide from it.
We can pretend it didn’t happen.
We can be mad or bitter.
All of these things form a shell on your heart, just like the egg.
After a while, your heart starts to get hardened.
Or are you going to have patience?
Are you going to try to find the good in what happened?
Or should I say…try to find God in what happened?
Are you going to let what happened soften your heart?
Are you going to let God mold you through this experience?
We all have our days when life decides to dunk us under water and turn up the heat.
When this happens, we need to take a moment and look around.
If we immediately try to put up a shell to protect us from the hot water, the heat will get to us and it will harden our heart like the egg.
But if we choose to let the water soak into us, it will soften our hearts like a potato.
The choice is yours…what do you want to be?
Pslam 95:7-8—Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…
God, please help me see you in the difficult times in life. Please break down the shell that I have put up to insulate myself from the struggles of my life. Soften my heart and mold me so that I can be more like you. You are amazing…I love you.
