Life is a Bag of Frozen Peas
A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking
dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles,
rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe the peas rolled across the
kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other side and rolled in another direction.
My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an unbearable pain.
I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing
and half crying as I collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it
doesn’t take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.
For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find a pea that had
escaped my first cleanup. In a corner, behind a table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat,
or hidden under a heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas hidden underneath.
At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new relationship with a
wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower support group. After we married, I was
reminded of those peas under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of
frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new city with a busy job
and a son having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings and the loss of his mother. I
was a wreck. I was a bag of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.
When life gets you down; when everything you know comes apart; when
you think you can never get through the tough times, remember, it is just a bag of
scattered, frozen peas. The peas can be collected and life will move on. You will
find all the peas. First the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up
and start to move on. Later you will find the bigger and harder to find peas. When you
pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.
The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move on, but
how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them around
with a broom, or will you pick them up one-by-one and put your life back together?
How will you collect your peas?
~ Michael T. Smith ~
[ by: Michael T. Smith
Copyright © 2005, (mtsmith@qwestonline.com) -- submitted by: Michael T. Smith ]
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