Eat your Vegetables

CEB, fall 2007

I read an interesting analogy recently: As a child might ask why he has to eat his vegetables, adults sometimes wonder why they have to go through certain things. Just like vegetables help bodies grow strong, so too, the analogy implied, should our experiences…

Is that what we’re doing, what this is all about, building strength? Really, we have strengthened some muscles – physically, emotionally, spiritually. But it’s hard to understand, hard to accept as something necessary. There are other families who have faced similar challenges, role models for us, our Popeyes. And people tell us all the time things like "God doesn't give you more than you can handle" and implore us to recognize that there's something to learn from all this, that we'll be stronger because of it. True, maybe. But maybe we've had our fill of vegetables, maybe we feel like the local CSA has delivered way more than we can ever manage to eat.

Someone else once said experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. Like the three lone brussel sprouts left on your plate. We didn't want Batten Disease. But we do want Celia. We'd pick her every time. She is, unmistakably, the cream of the crop.

JEB