Peaches go way back in my story… at 10 years old, my family moved next to a peach farm. We ate peaches off the tree every morning for breakfast during August. Peaches for lunch. Peaches for dinner. And in between. We picked up the windfalls for pennies, and sometimes there was only an hour between the orchard and our canning jars. I think we canned more peaches than anything else, and that was ok by me and all my siblings, because it was our FAVORITE. Our mom had to ration those jars, because we would have eaten them every day!

I helped canned peaches one August, and got married and moved away the next, before they were ripe. That was 13 years ago. And I haven’t canned a peach since. My little sister gave me a bunch of jars for Christmas last year, and it was heaven.

A bitter sweet heaven, because I wasn’t allowed to celebrate with her or the rest of my family that Christmas, but still, the kids and I could taste her love in every bite.

Depression can take so much from a person. I haven’t been able to can any type of produce since I came back from China. I have all the gear, my mom saved a lot of stuff for me to get started when I got “home”. But I just couldn’t work up the energy to tackle it.

Canning means:

1. finding fruit
2. finding $
3. washing jars (ew)
4. cooperative kids
5. blah blah blah blah

And I just couldn’t GET THERE.

This year, instead of feeling like I should can all the things, I had one goal.

PEACHES.

Can peaches.

I didn’t care how much or how little, I just needed to do it. And I’m sorry, but it seems like a freaking unattainable goal/hope.

Until I shared that goal/hope with a couple friends.

And that couple enthusiastically invited me to come can with them. And guess what? I didn’t want to. Because why? Well, I had to sit on that for a bit.

I didn’t want to because it felt really intimate. And intimacy brings me rejection and pain usually. And even though these people had never betrayed me, WHAT IF THEY DID?

Also, depression has been such a life sucker, I was afraid I would let them down. What if I just started crying or something? What if I sucked at canning? What if…

Yeah. It is an endless circle of anxiety and fear. Boo.

So this is where LOVE steps in.

I opened the gate of my heart, I accepted their kind and hopeful offer. I spent the last of my food stamps on some peaches and I loaded up my van with my jars.

And it was awesome. The Mr took all the burden off my shoulders and just told me what to do. He took the time to explain things I had forgotten and remind me of the process. We laughed and talked about stuff all over the place. The Mrs and I peeled and sliced an peeled and sliced… and 50 something quarts later, we were done for the day.

This morning I took my kids to the orchard where I had my first job as a peach weighing and selling girl, and we picked a bunch of peaches.

The kids went to their dad’s tonight, and I canned 3 canners full all by myself, jamming to some Broadway tunes. And it was no big deal. It was even kind of fun.

See what happened there?

Love with skin on came into my world and was patient through my fear and my worry and my depression and my paralysis.

Love had time and space and wasn’t afraid of me

Love walked beside me through a little thing like canning peaches.

Love took the fear out of the peaches and made them my friend.