Red, White and Blue!

I’ve never thought much about how food gets to the table until I opened a bakery.  My first major acknowledgement was when I was growing the business and had to buy vanilla extract in bulk. Prices skyrocketed and what was once roughly $9/bottle was selling up to $30/bottle. Liquid gold.  I learned there was a vanilla bean shortage overseas and because beans have to cure in a bottle of ethyl alcohol for months.  It would take time for our shelves to be replenished.

In order to have pure vanilla extract, this is an interesting perspective to consider:  the work is long and hard to produce a vanilla bean.  Then after all of the work, it must be saturated for months, steeped in a bottle.  The work becomes to do nothing.  There is no speeding up the process.  Change takes place in the waiting.

Tommy planted a garden a few years ago and I began to feel overwhelmed with the need to make the most of every fruit and vegetable we grew.  I peeled tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, made salsa and more.  

Produce.  It’s both a noun and a verb.  We are meant to enjoy both versions.  Nearly six years ago I was penciling in a calendar of events I could not possibly keep.  I had kept this pace most of my life. Sure I was producing a lot of great work and community conversations but I was moving too fast.  I missed a lot of moments because my mind was mostly elsewhere than where I was. I was always harvesting, or always planting, and it seemed like an endless effort of chasing.

I purposely began to take things off my plate and slow down.  Then a couple of years ago, a back injury leveled me completely for months.

There is immense beauty to be found when you are in the middle of the change you need to experience.  Important things come into focus.  If willing, you quite literally soak up your surroundings with a new lens and you can find a new purpose.  You can extract yourself from whatever you may be doing that feels so distracting from who you are to become and bottle up a different approach to your efforts. 

Sometimes you have to change what you are producing, not merely to become something new, but to get the benefit of extended life.  Cucumbers become pickles. Vanilla beans give way to pure vanilla extract.  

I was reading Ecclesiastes 3 and this truth hit me:

He has made everything beautiful in his time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…I know there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil -this is the gift of God.

We are meant to enjoy the fruits of our labor and the challenge today is how do we recognize the moments when our labor has been enough?  

Maybe it’s time to sit at the table (with friends and family I might add) and eat and drink and be happy.

Happy 4th of July!