Too Soon

This year, on a whim, we grew watermelons. Actually, we are still growing watermelons. Allow me to explain. This past spring, my spouse and I went to a local farm store to look at replacing some garden plants that had failed to thrive. While perusing what else was available, I came across some Georgia Rattlesnake watermelon. I eagerly showed my spouse my find, and they agreed that we had one spot in our perennial bed where it might fit.

Fast forward to this past weekend. We had seven (SEVEN!) HUGE watermelons on a vine that usually only produces 2, maybe 3, watermelons. Having never grown watermelons before, I had no idea how to tell when they are ripe. I see people at the grocery store all of the time thumping melons, but honestly, when I thump them, they never really speak to me. So, I turned to the great prophet of the ether, St. Google, to help me better understand how to tell if these melons were ready to harvest.

Like many prophets, the instructions and anecdotes found on Google seemed to muddy the waters more than clear them up. Some said to look at the color of the ground spot on the underside of the melon. Some said to wait for the stem attached to the melon to dry up. Others said to trace the stem back from the melon to find the first two tendrils and see if they were dried up. So, I decided to take a little bit from each piece of advice in order to determine if the melon was ripe. 

I decided I would examine the LARGEST of the melons. I gently rolled the fruit over and saw that the ground spot was yellowish in color. Okay, good sign. The vine was dried up in other places, just not going into the melon. And one, not both, of the tendrils was dried up. That, coupled with the size of the melon (it weighed in at a whopping 26.2 pounds!!), led me to believe that it was ready to pick. 

With watermelons, you really only get one shot. It’s not like a tomato where if you pull it too soon it will finish ripening on a window sill. As I cut into this giant melon, however, I knew almost immediately that this one shot was over. The resistance of the knife against the rind was present on the outside of the melon where I expected it to be…and then it was present as I cut deeper into it. I had harvested this melon far too soon and, while some of the fruit was still salvageable, it was not nearly as sweet and delicious as it would have been had it been allowed to fully mature. 

This past week I have given lots of thought to the parts of life that come too soon–many because we rush into them. We enter a new relationship too soon after a previous one has ended only to find that the new relationship is not exactly what we thought it would be. We pull a bandaid off a wound too soon only to find a scar has not yet formed and healing has not yet happened. We say “I love you” too soon and find that we don’t really mean it. We enter a social situation too soon after an anxiety attack. We make a joke too soon about something that we know will likely be a source of laughter in the future, but isn’t quite funny yet. We rush our children to “get over it” when they are hurting, we rush our spouse to forgive us after an argument that caused them pain, or we rush our friends to move on following the loss of someone they love–all of it perhaps not soon enough for us, but far too soon for them.

I have come to believe that when we rush into things it is often because we are uncomfortable in liminal spaces. There is great discomfort and dis-ease when life brings us to times when we are in between the “now” and the “not yet.” Rather than sit in that discomfort for too long, we do the very best we can to make it stop as soon as possible. So we rush to make decisions and rush to form new relationships and even rush those around us to grieve on our time tables all so that the discomfort we are feeling in the moment will end. After all, even bad decisions are decisions, so we can stop the uncertainty and the discomfort that leads up to making a decision in the first place. The wrong relationship is still a relationship that will stop the loneliness and the heartache with the ending of the last one. 

The thing about doing things too soon or forcing other people to do them too soon is that it doesn’t end our dis-ease or our discomfort. It just gives birth to a new discomfort or a new source of our dis-ease. In our effort to avoid the pain of uncertainty, we are causing a new kind of pain to rise up in us, when we would have been better off letting ourselves be uncomfortable for just a minute, and letting those around us grieve as they need to grieve.

This is one of the reasons I love the liturgical seasons in the church. Just when we think we cannot possibly count one more Sunday after Pentecost in the LOOOOOOONG season of ordinary time, Advent happens. Advent forces our mad dash to Christmas to slow a bit, asking us to mark time differently. Lent slows our roll into Easter and the resurrection, and demands that we sit in the shadow of the cross. There is something beautiful and holy and sacred about waiting, not rushing, pausing, and letting things unfold in the time they need to unfold. 

Tom Petty was right all those years ago, I think, “the waiting IS the hardest part,” but our faith teaches us that it is also the most fruitful part. Learning to wait allows us to learn from each part of our journeys, no matter where they lead. It allows us to get real about what’s going on and what life might be trying to teach us. It is, in a very real way, an act of love–for ourselves and others around us.

So, I’m asking you to join me in refraining from doing things too soon this week. I’m asking that you join me in pondering the tough internal questions like, “Why am I rushing this?” or “Why am I afraid of being uncomfortable?” or “Why do I view the grief of those around me as so threatening to me?”. I’m asking that you join me in waiting and seeing what God does in our discomfort and our dis-ease…it could just be larger and more delicious than we could even ask or imagine.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa 

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