Culinary Connoisseurs, here’s something for your Pinterest Board.
Brussel Sprouts a la Frozen. Simply scrub off the ice. Simmer them in boiling water. Lather with a stick of butter.
Doesn’t the thought make your mouth water? Me too! Unfortunately, before I could cook them, my husband—who hates Brussel Sprouts—happened to see the expiration date on the package: Oct 14, 2009.
“No way!” I grabbed my magnifying lens and examined the package. “It expires Oct 2014, on the ninth day.”
Considering it was June 2015, and I was NOT in the mood to have my stomach pumped, I reluctantly tossed the Brussel Sprouts into the garbage. Soon I was on a mission to excavate the other expired food from the depths of my freezer.
Sadly, my freezer had become a frozen coffin for food.Still hopeful, I waved a squished object at my husband. “Is this is any good?”
“What is it?”
“An ice cream sandwich.”
He rolled his eyes, and opted for a PBJ sandwich. “Blog about your expired food.”
I handed him two slices of bread after I double-checked them for green mold. “But what’s the message?”
“Learning to let go.”
His tone of voice implied that I might be in danger of reaching my expiration date. However, if “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”, my husband would have let me go after the first week of marriage.
Who knew he didn’t like cold hot dogs for dinner?
Only to say, Husband’s comment about letting go reminded me of a recent conversation with a friend. We’d been talking about our grown children moving on, and how this season of motherhood had changed in a bittersweet way!
We agreed. “It’s hard to let go.”
However, learning to let go encompasses more than watching someone we care about move away, or die. It’s more than leaving a familiar job, or downsizing to a retirement community.
Sometimes we refuse to let go of the very things that are holding us down.
- Abusive marriages
- Bad influences
- Unhealthy personal habits
- Grudges and unforgiveness
- Material possessions
- Living in the past
- Emotional baggage like old audio tapes in our head that accuse us of being:
“Ugly. Stupid. Unworthy. Friendless. (Fill in the blank).”
Letting go of expired, frozen Brussel Sprouts might be funny (unless you’re starving), but I’m curious. And convicted!
What am I holding onto, and why?
Perhaps it’s time to seek the Lord, and ask Him!
“There’s a right time to hold on and another to let go.” (Ecclesiastes 3:6 Message)
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I LOVE this blog post, Karen! You have such an incredible gift for using stories to illustrate biblical principles. Plus you are totally inspiring me to clean out my freezer which I REALLY need to do and have a terrible time doing because frozen foods that have been in the freezer two or three years are huge items on my “hard to let go of” list! I hate to waste food and my normal strategy of leaving it in the fridge until it gets mold on it so i don’t feel guilty throwing it away doesn’t work in the freezer!
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Thanks for the compliment, Barb. And now that you’ve confessed, I’m going to hold you accountable for your frozen food! Let em go!! Don’t wait for one of the characters from Veggie Tales to show up and help you!!
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For me it’s letting go of expectations. The only one I should expect from is God because He said He would keep His promises so I can expect Him to do that and the only thing is God’s grace (and other characteristics) because He said it is enough. There I go being verbose again! Thanks, Karen.
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Expectations! That’s another great one and I happen to also hold onto them. I heard a sermon today from Hebrews 12 about setting aside the things that entangle us. Wish I’d used that verse in my blog. Letting Go. Laying aside. It’s a very active verb that We are called to do on this Christian journey in order to follow Christ.
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For me it’s letting go of old ways so I can do new things. It’s pouring old wine into new wineskins. It’s so hard for this old dog to learn any new tricks!
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That’s a great one, Bethany. I hadn’t thought of letting go of old ways. Very true! Thanks for sharing.
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