Life is Like Spaghetti

I woke up craving spaghetti.  Probably not the best choice on a day when the temperatures will push 90 degrees, but that’s how cravings go.

After Church I made my way to the grocery to pull together all the ingredients I would need.

As I wandered through the produce aisle getting mushrooms and onions and peppers, I began to ponder,  life is a lot like spaghetti.

If you think about it, we are the noodles.  The part of the dish that pulls everything else together, and as noodles, we attract all the good, the vibrant colors, the bad and the ugly in our lives and allow them to stick to us like the sauce of a good dish.

The vegetables in the dish are the moments and seasons of life that make the taste explode in our mouths, those small moments that make life what it is.

Like the onions and mushrooms, these everyday ingredients fill our life with the perfectly needed chunks that blend together with our “sauce.”  Not always perfectly sliced or diced, but needed to make a quality serving.

I enjoy a combo of garlic, green, yellow and red peppers in my spaghetti.  Like the little pops of life that sometimes catch us off guard with levels of punch.  Like the garlic and peppers, our lives are filled with moments and situations that sneak up on us, but when we accept those moments will come and incorporate them into the other flavors we experience on a daily basis, the pepper moments give us the opportunity to learn and grow.

I don’t make a homemade sauce.  In my mind those sauces in a jar are as good and less time-consuming than pealing tomatoes and adding the perfect blend of spices.  Like life, we can sometimes find easier ways of doing things that enrich us and allow us to use what’s available instead of going through the arduous task of making life happen.

The final ingredient in any good spaghetti is the meat.  I use turkey, not always the popular choice, but for me it works.  In my own life, I have not always followed the way of others, I lead an independent life that others may look at and think it to be out of the norm, but again, it works for me, it’s the life I was given.

After all the ingredients are prepped and put into a large pot they start to cook, just like life.   There are moments when the sauce boils and others when it slows to a simmer, needed moments in life to give us a perfect blend.

Sometimes the smell of garlic may be overpowering or the big chunks of mushrooms may not be very pretty, but as the ingredients all mold together and work with each other to create a perfect sauce, magic happens.

Just like life.  Sometimes life is messy, sometimes it is ugly, but most of the time it is a glorious gift and when you dig in and taste the wonders built on planning, preparation, simmers, boils and all the delicious ingredients pulled together, not much can beat it, even on a day when the temperature is approaching 90.

The good, the bad, the ugly and the vibrant colors all come together for the perfect dish and then you add the noodles, allowing everything to cling together, just like life.

So today, I decided to make a pot of spaghetti, a dish that reminds me of life.