when life gives you lemonade...

I haven't written a blog in FOREVER and I've felt bad about it... mostly cuz I love writing and I just haven't been able to. no internet at home makes it difficult. I could type it all on my iPod & post from there... but it'd take me months to finish it since I type with just 1 pinkie on that thing. it might be entertaining to watch, though. haha I was going to write the other day about stuff that has happened to me in the past week or so. seriously random/funny stuff. but I was just driving to lunch (just picked up a small snack and I'm not even hungry) and I suddenly had the idea for this blog. I hope it makes sense... (and realize that I'm lecturing myself as I write it. some of you may know what I'm referring to... in which case, just keep kicking my butt and telling me to quit worrying about it)

so yeah, "when life gives you lemonade". where am I gonna start with this blog? I'm not quite sure. ok, we've all heard the phrase "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." in that sense, we all know that when stuff happens to us that isn't nice, we can either take it as it is and grump & grouch about it.... or we can turn it around and make it into something positive. it's a choice to throw ourselves a pity party or to learn & grow and continue on with living a happy life. this is a normal "problem" for people hence the actual need for the phrase. but I've discovered that there's an equally natural problem that occurs in life that we don't always recognize.

have you ever noticed that sometimes when life hands you "lemonade" (good things) sometimes we start worrying about the ingredients that were put in the lemonade. what do I mean by that? well, instead of being excited about what's been brought into our life, we start thinking about all the other times life handed us lemons instead of lemonade... and we wonder if this time the lemonade might just be lacking the sugar. basically, that it has the appearance of lemonade but is still sour and we won't notice it until we try to taste it. so how do we deal with it? we avoid tasting it and worry about it. what the heck?! that doesn't even make sense! why do we do stupid things like that? right in front of our face we have something amazing and we may be thankful about it... but at the same time we sit there wondering if it really is as it appears instead of diving in and drinking it. I don't get it. WHY do we do this?

actually, I have a perfectly understandable reason why we do this... but I wish we didn't work this way. we've been "trained" to accept the bad things in life. lots of people "expect the worst but hope for the best" (thanks to a certain friend for putting those thoughts into actual words... I know I lectured you for thinking like that, but I now realize it's in a lot of us to different extents.)in life so as to not be disappointed. this is a good way to overcome disappointment... cuz if you never expect anything then you won't be disappointed. but how can this benefit us in daily life? it can't. it puts a negative outlook on everything you do so that even if it looks like something good is about to happen, there's always that expectation that it's not going to happen. this is to protect ourselves from being hurt again from disappointment.

in day to day life this doesn't necessarily affect us. but I do know that when something we've secretly been hoping for shows it's face... many of us take this point of view and say "it's too good to be true". some people get up and run from the situation so as to protect themselves. this hurts all people involved. other people sit around looking at the situation and try to figure out how this lemonade can be lacking the sugar when it looks exactly like lemonade... but instead of tasting it, they focus on thinking about how it might not be lemonade yet and just keep observing it waiting for it to prove itself. this is also stupid... and most of us do it. seriously, if you're thirsty and there's lemonade right there WHY would you want to sit around looking at it wondering if it's good lemonade?! at least take a sip to see.

how can we overcome this? I really don't know... haha I'm still learning. I mean, I know that all the fears to taste the lemonade are due to past disappointments. so I need to overcome those past disappointments. but sometimes they come and smack you upside the face when you didn't even know those fears were there. I'm training myself to combat those fears... sometimes it's hard. reminding myself that I'm a Princess (not just because my name means Princess) and a daughter of the Highest King and deserve everything is the best way I've overcome it until now. but like I said, I'm still learning. so I'm currently going between being incredibly happy about the blessings to worrying if the lemonade is going to become lemons again. my heart tells me it's lemonade... but my mind is taking a lot longer to accept it.

I hope this blog made sense and that as I was lecturing myself that I may have spoke some kind of truth into your life. I'd really like to hear if it meant anything to you or if you have any comments. :-)