When Life thows in Black Jelly Beans

One of my favorite stories growing up was about how my dad came to hate raisins. According to my mom, at some point in time way back when, my dad was eating some raisins. Since raisins are just a simple snack, he wasn't exactly looking at them, and popped one in his mouth, and it turned out not to be a raisin. It was in fact a fly. Yes, one of those wonderful flying critters who land on cows and poo and food and...well, you get the idea. So my dad didn't like raisins.

Now, whether or not that story is accurate in it's entirety, I'm not exactly sure. But I do know my dad hates raisins.

I'm the same way with black licorice Jelly Belly's. Before I was born, my grandparents opened and ran a candy store in Tulare. If you're old enough, you might remember it. It was called "The Candy Store" and was in the shopping center on Prosperity where Lucky's used to be, where Vons is now, right across from Pizza Hut. They shut it down in about 1987ish, so I missed out. But I do remember my Grandma's love for Jelly Belly's, thus creating my love for them as well. Hello, you can get the Willy Wonka effect of a whole three course meal by eating three of them. Seriously. They're kind of amazing. But then there are the black licorice ones. Those can destroy the love for them pretty fast. They dull your taste buds, numb your mouth, and above all, taste terrible.

So the other night, it struck me that life is like a bag of Jelly Belly's. Not to copy Forrest Gump, but you never know what your going to get. You can be sailing through life, totally comfortable with not a care in the world. When all of a sudden, you come across one of those terrible events that leave you hurt, exhausted, and not knowing which way is up. But on the other side of that comes the happiness again. The good stuff. The stuff you look forward to. It is possible to get past the black jelly beans or the flies, and get back to enjoying the real stuff, the good stuff.

I think that God throws in those unfortunate unpleasant events because we need to be reminded that he is in control. He allows these things to occur so we can be reminded that we have an awesome and powerful Creator, who loves and cares for us, and also has a sense of humor. Knowing my dad, I can only imagine his face. I know the way I react when I taste the nastiness. And I can just see God looking down and laughing because we forget all these things. Not that the tragedies of life are comical, the the simple things that we make big deals. We take these small things that happen to us, and make it big because we're human, and we are constantly reminded that we are human, and we don't like it.

I'm not quite sure what the method to my madness is, or if I even had a point, but I like finding random metaphors or symbols in simple every day life and applying it. So there you go.