But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23
This verse of scripture literally sums up my first full week of being a "nanny". The week was as amazing as I hoped and as exhausting as I feared, but most importantly I survived and am better for it. We begin so many of our days with trepidation. Will I have enough? Will I be enough? Do I want this enough? We forget there is another side - that what we have will overflow - that we are more than we think - and that our want will only increase our love.
I get to spend my days with six amazing youth ages ranging from twenty months - thirteen years of age. We cover a lot of ground. My mind, my body (so many aches ;), my heart, and my spirit are tested daily from so many directions. Because each "child" (I believe we are all children) sees life from a different perspective and therefore has different needs I decided it was good to have a theme each day. I also figured if I was to pull from any source to be our foundation, the Bible would be the best source. This week and next we are diving into the fruits of the Spirit. Each day a "fruit" is the theme and we plan several activities around this. And to make it even more diverse and fun I picked a fruit that I felt best represented the "fruits" of the Spirit to tie in the lesson and promote a lifestyle FULL of Health for both myself and the kids who want to eat/live healthy (like many of us that at least say this is what they want :)
What fruits would you pick for love? Joy? Peace? Patience? Kindness?
I chose pineapple, melons (watermelon and canary), olives, pear, and oranges. What I find a tad funny is the only fruit that I have not physically eaten this week? Pears for patience. I feel that it is pretty fitting :) Also it was the one fruit that the kids all made faces and frowned afraid they would have to sample a bite. Funny, how patience tends to be the toughest fruit to swallow.
Why my choices? I picked pineapple for love because it makes me think of Hawaii that seems to have an image of pure bliss as it portrays a calm and loving environment that exudes utter relaxation.
Melons for joy because when I think of summer, fun, and family - we have shared many watermelons. They are sweet, plentiful, and can get a little messy and everyone seems to have a smile after sampling a bite.
Peace using olives - olive branch anyone?
Patience with pears. First I have to share my nerdy alliteration pleasure. I like when beginning sounds play off of each other. Next, I think it is easy for us to be the opposite of pears when it comes to patience. We can start our day patient but as the day wanes so does our patience. We need to be able to build our patience when we are at the point of having only a little bit. Also a pear is ripe when it is. It needs time and moves at its own pace and we as the consumer have to be . . .patient.
Last but not least orange for kindness. I read somewhere that the color orange symbolizes friendship and kindness. Also think about it - when you eat an orange it is one of the few fruits that once you start peeling lends itself to be easy to "share" kindness with a friend.
This week has allowed me to sample many fruits - physically and spiritually. Its amazing when we open ourselves to the world of possibilities - anything is possible and everything changes.
May your HealthFULL Journey include a large variety of fruit to sample- physically and spiritually so that our journeys can be as flavorful and as bountiful as possible. 'Til we meet again . . .
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