Here's my spin on Forrest Gump's "Life is like a box of chocolates."  I developed this concept while mixing "Green Smoothies" in my new Vita-Mix blender. 

     Spinach is a very healthy, but bitter-tasting food.  If you want to enjoy eating a spinach salad, you need to add some fruit for sweetness.  The fruit doesn't change anything about the spinach, nor does it negate its bitterness, but eating the them together is more palatable than eating the spinach alone.  As Mary Poppins is fond of saying, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".

      Like a spinach salad, our lives can have some painfully bitter components, but there are also sweet tidbits tucked here and there.   Just as fruits and vegetables both contain necessary nutrition, so too, both the bitter and sweet times can be part of a spiritually and emotionally healthy life.  Many lives and salads have nutty parts, and that's okay too.  A little zany-ness can be theraputic at times!

     Having a new baby doesn't make losing the one before "all better", but the sweetness brings balance to the bitterness.  If life were all bitter, we wouldn't make it.  How wonderful that God knows our frame and remembers we are but dust and is merciful to us.  In His mercy, He brings sweet "fruit" to our lives.  In His wisdom, He doesn't fail to provide the "spinach" we need to grow strong in our faith.

     I feel like I'm always quoting songs, but they just seem to say what I'm thinking and feeling better than I can.  I like Steven Curtis Chapman's song The Miracle of the Moment.  Here's part of it.

There's only One who knows
What's really out there waiting
And all the moments yet to be
And all we need to know
Is He's out there waiting
To Him the future's history

And He has given us a treasure called right now
And this is the only moment we can do anything about

So breathe it in and breathe it out
And listen to your heartbeat
There's a wonder in the here and now
It's right there in front of you
And I don't want you to miss the miracle of the moment

And if it brings you tears
Then taste them as they fall
Let them soften your heart

And if it brings you laughter
Then throw your head back
And let it go

     God has designed life with both the bitter parts that bring us tears and the sweet parts that make us smile.  We must learn to embrace them both.  As Job said to his scornful wife, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" (Job 2:10)

     So enjoy eating this spinach salad called Life, knowing that God has prepared it with just the right mix of "flavors" for you!