Tough Lemons

We’ve all heard the sayings:

When the going gets tough, the though get going.

Or

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Well what happens when life hands you a bushel full of tough lemons?  Lemons you can’t peel or squeeze or even cut open.  The kind of lemons that are so hard and bitter you couldn’t add enough sugar to make them suitable for drinking.  What do you then and how do you get going when you have to drag a pile of rock hard lemons with you?

This past week was one of the most difficult and stressful weeks of my life.  It wasn’t any one thing that made it that way, but combination of a lot (I mean A LOT) of little things that kept adding up on top of each other until all I had was a heaping mound of petrified lemons.  I won’t go into all the individual things that happened, but I will tell you I tried to make lemonade.

I really did!

(A quick side note, one of the things that went wrong this week was a technical error on my part on Goodreads and I want to tell you all to mark SPLINERED by A.G. Howard on your ‘to-read’ list.  I’m very excited for Anita’s debut novel coming out in January 2013!)

(Back to what I was saying and this part has nothing to do with my boo-boo on Goodreads.) I tried to make the best out of a bad situation.  I tried to take other’s comments with a grain of salt.  I tried to remind myself that I am truly blessed in many ways.  I tried to look beyond the things happening right now and remember that the day will come when I’ve met or even exceeded my goals.

And you know what I discovered…I don’t like lemonade!

I don’t like the bitter aftertaste it leaves or the sour chalky way it makes my tongue feel.  So, I’m bagging up all those tough lemons and pitching them.  No, I’m not giving up or giving in.  I’m deciding to make Kool-Aid instead.  Kool-Aid is sweet and yummy and filled with refreshing goodness.  I’m deciding to be kind to those who are not kind to me.  I’m deciding to trust that I’m on the right path and these are just some of the challenges I’ll have to face to get where I’m supposed to go.  I’m deciding to embrace rejection and shun jealousy.  And I’m deciding to love every up and down of my life because if there were never any downs, I wouldn’t appreciate the ups, right?

One of my favorite blogs, Pub(lishing) Crawl, did a post this week on strong female heroines, heroines that have both inner and outer strength.  It was geared more toward young adult books, but I think the premise stands for all women.  At every stage of life we have to have strength to deal with the issues we face.  We have to be our own strong heroine and set an example for others to be strong as well.  Call it what you like, getting tough, making lemonade (or Kool-Aid in my case) or being a strong heroine.  But whatever it is, I’m going to do it.  I’m going to persevere through the stuff of life that weighs you down and holds you back, and I’m going to be better for it.

This song was my mantra for the week, here’s Jason Mraz with I Won’t Give Up.