In the Tending Season

I'm crazy about peaches. I like to eat them whole, like an apple, leaning over the kitchen sink with the juice dripping off my chin. I like them so much that I may sneak away while my kids play in the other room to eat my peaches in secret.

It's hard to love peaches though. They're a fruit that requires faith. We invest in them when they are still hard, hoping for them to ripen to sweetness. Believing in the tender perfection that can burst forth if we catch them in that perfect moment. Sometimes that moment never comes. Sometimes they were picked too early and never lose their hardness or they were picked too late and the fruit has become mealy and bitter.

Peaches remind me of psalm 1:3, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers."

Mommies, we may be firmly planted trees, but we only bear fruit in season. If we try to force fruit during the seasons of sowing, trimming, or abiding, from our sheer willpower to produce, it may be mealy or hard. The tending seasons require faith and faithfulness. We still do the work: water, weed, and prune. We move forward in obedience to the tasks God sets before us, but there are seasons with little to no fruit.

Yet we hold fast in faith. We believe that God is working--in us and in our little ones--as we invest with hope, waiting for the moments of juicy sweetness, the ripe fruits. One day, we'll get our peaches.