How Life Works

To make homemade butter means to commit for fifteen of the longest minutes of your life, as you stand there shaking cream in a jar until your arm seems as if it will fall off. The cream starts to whip and fills the jar, making the shaking seem like it has done all that it can do even though you are still far from butter. You may even stop there, and put this cream on your toast and call it a day. Half-done.

But that's just like life, isn't it? The flurry of activity that makes up days and sometimes has you feel as if you're not getting anywhere? The desire to give up, to stop, to abandon the cause, to exclaim out loud, "It's just not working." Especially when things get hard. Or results are not apparent.

But if you stick with it, and trust, there comes a moment, a glorious, golden moment, when suddenly a slight sloshy sound catches your always-surprised ears and you know that you have made it through. And as the buttermilk quickly separates from the butter, you realize you are mere moments away from the sweetest, freshest butter of your life. And only because you persevered.

When I feel completely ineffectual, I know that it is time for me to do one thing and one thing only. Make butter. And remind myself how life works.

And so, as Lake Lanier hit its historic low last night (the lowest it has been since it was built in the 1950s), and I continue to believe that small actions matter, even if it's just to put a little bit of positive energy into the world, I will take one small extra action today, however unrelated to our Georgia drought it may sound.

I will make butter.

How Life Works