If I had handed Lucy a whole apple as her first food, she would have no doubt been excited to be getting a new toy but she would not have eaten it. Without teeth or experience, she would not have been able to access the fruit or reap any of its nutritional benefits. If she had managed to get a piece of the fruit in her mouth, she likely would have choked on the chunk she wasn't yet ready to chew.
So, I cut the apples into smaller pieces. I left the peeling on because, while it can be hard to break through without teeth, it carries many nutrients not present in the rest of the fruit. I cut them into chunks and placed them into my crock pot. The only thing I added was a small amount of water. Then I turned it on and walked away. The apples remained in the crock pot for a few hours with slow, constant heat. This heat, over time, began to change the apples. They got sweeter and softer and their skin changed from a bright red color to a very muted color.
Even though the pieces were soft and smaller than a whole apple, Lucy still could not eat the apples like this. I turned off the heat and used an immersion blender to make it smooth. The puree looked nothing like the original apples, but it contained all the same nutrients and was now in a form she could eat.
I got to thinking...I've had apples in our home weekly since before Lucy was born, and the crock-pot as well. But it wasn't until this point, with the applesauce made and Lucy being 6 months old, that both Lucy and the apples were ready for one another.
WOW! Isn't this how God is with us? Sometimes what we think we want is right in front of us but God has to turn the heat up to make it into applesauce for us. It's not that he doesn't want us to have it, it's just that he knows we can't handle it in that form. And other times, everything we need to make the applesauce is in front of us but we aren't ready to eat it. Again, it's not that God doesn't want us to have it; this time it's that he has to get us ready for it.
I can see this truth looking back at my life. God had always given me the desire to be a wife and mom. Before meeting Paul, I was dating a guy who wanted to marry me. He even took me ring shopping and was very honest about wanting to start a family very soon. But, even though he was there saying all the right things (like the whole apples and crock pot that had been sitting in my kitchen), it wasn't in the right form. Then, I met Paul who was clearly the right one for me and we thought we were ready to be parents. However, God told us we had to wait. We weren't ready to eat the applesauce, so to speak. BUT, at the perfect moment both of us and Lucy were ready for one another.
Seems a big lesson to extrapolate out of baby food but also such an awesome way for God to illustrate it for me!
