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My husband and I pull into a curved dusty drive in front of a fruit stand. It’s busy this morning with folks coming and going, bags and baskets of peaches in their arms. We wait for this all year around here. It’s the thick of the season now and there are several varieties to choose from today. Even one called “James Bond” that makes me wonder in exactly what ways it resembles its namesake.
We wander over to a table laden with discounted fruit labeled “seconds.” A wiry woman with sun-graced skin the color and texture of a golden potato just out of the earth comes to help us make our selection. She points and says, “These are here because they have some kind of trouble.” I look at her and say with a half-grin, “Don’t we all?”
Mark and I have bought these peaches before and we know what she means. There might be a bruise from a hard landing on unrelenting ground. There could be a tiny hole where a bug helped itself to dinner. Sometimes the peach is just too ripe and spills sticky juice across your fingers when you take it in your hand.
I glance at the cousins of these peaches sitting on other tables inside the little stand. They are beautiful and unblemished as they sit proudly in their buckets waiting to be taken home by folks who will not settle for anything less. I think if I were a peach I’d rather be on the “seconds” table where the messy is allowed.
We choose our imperfect peaches and cart them home with anticipation. I set one on a small plate the color of cream and split it right down the side with a silver knife. The inside is the color of a sunset—oranges, yellows and reds. I bring the piece to my mouth and take a bite. My eyes pop open. It is, without question, the most delicious peach I’ve ever eaten. An explosion of sweet and tart and summer.
I look at it and whisper right to its skin, “Who would have thought you had that in you?” Then I think about how this is right. How it rings true to life. Because we all have parts of our hearts or stories that we think don’t measure up. We call them unworthy and less than and we put them to the side. But the longer I’ve walked this spinning earth the more I find those are the places where the glory and the beauty are likely to show up and shout “surprise!”
I assumed “seconds” meant “not first, not best.”
Maybe it really just means “worth a second look.”
XOXO
Holley Gerth
* If you liked this post you’ll love this book – You’re Loved No Matter What: Freeing Your Heart from the Need to Be Perfect
* Looking for a study to do with a group this fall or next spring? Check out the You’re Already Amazing LifeGrowth Guide and free videos.
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I’m having Coffee For Your Heart with my friend Holley Gerth
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