Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we plan and along our journey we will be given lemons, in many cases extremely sour lemons. My divorce was a sour lemon moment but over time those lemons showed me they were necessary for spiritual, emotional, & mental growth. Lemons are going to exist but changing how I dealt with the lemons would be up to me. Would I allow lemons of sadness, anger, or pity control me or would I start squeezing those lemons in order to drink a glass of thirst quenching lemonade with just the right amount of sugar. Life will always bring challenges but how I decide to overcome those challenges would be my lemonade lesson.
My LifeLoveMarriageDivorce journey has allowed me to grow in so many ways. This may actually sound odd but I wouldn’t change the journey. Some may ask…are you saying that you are happy to be divorced; well I did blog about being happily divorced. However, what I am saying is that my personal lemons not divorce alone but all the challenges life brings allowed me to self evaluate, self improve, & grow in leaps & bounds. I realize that I needed those sour lemons of revelation to help me evolve in to the person I am today. If those lemons didn’t exist maybe I wouldn’t be happily drinking my freshly squeezed lemonade.
Lemons taught me that true forgiveness is the gateway to peace. Lemons also taught me that settling wasn’t an option. For me the fear of the unknown or the familiar became the culprit in my “settling” for things that affected my heart as I compromised for the greater good. I compromised my position and principles to make others happy, which was my doing for various reasons; compromise is one thing but settling due to the fear of the unknown is something totally different. “Settling” cripples your true authentic self and that self should not be compromised.
Lemons are sour and I will say for a moment that I developed a “the hell with love” lemon attitude but that is the complete opposite of who I am and I didn’t want to compromise my beliefs about love. I realize that those lemons would only help me thrive in that next chapter of my life. My most important lemon lesson was to truly trust God…”Monique-you are not in control, God is!” It’s not like I didn’t already know God was in charge but trying to help God micro-manage the outcome of my life needed to stop. Lemons caused me to not only have faith in God but to have unwavering faith in His plan for my life. I am thankful for lemons because they allow me to grow and apart of that growth is sharing this LifeLoveMarriageDivorce blog with you. Cheers to lemonade!
Until the next blog,
Blessings & Love!