I am much better these days at keeping my refrigerator produce drawer clean. I'm mostly vegetarian so my produce drawer can become quite full, including some pretty squishy vegetables like tomatoes, and some prone-to-rotting choices like peppers and cucumbers. Shielded by, perhaps, a triple pack of lettuce, or a bag of celery or baby carrots, some of these likely offenders can filter down to the bottom of the drawer, become forgotten, and start to dissolve into decidely slimy results. But I'm keeping the drawer clean these days, wiping it out and getting rid of any potential offenders before they offend. In fact, I'm not just keeping up with the produce drawer; I'm doing much better with keeping the entire refrigerator clean.

This is of import because...?

Because I never question why God designed a world where twinkly-eyed three-year-olds die of cancer. Where an exuberant young mother dies giving birth to her firstborn. Where a newlywed husband gets hit and killed by a drunk driver. Where a considerate teen gets shot and killed by countering a mugger. For some reason, I can accept that there is a grand design, and that a person's time here is finished exactly when it is supposed to be.

What I do question, often and always, is why did God make it so easy for those of us living to obsess on everything that is wrong? What we haven't done? What we can't accomplish? What it looks like we will never succeed at now?

These are the kind of thoughts I find myself, and my friends, all competent women living lives full of a myriad of successes, focusing on:

I've haven't gotten over to my mother's to help her with fill-in-the-blank. (No thought given to the hundreds of times and hundreds of helpful tasks she HAS completed for her mother.)

I sprained my ankle weeks ago and I haven't done the rehab so I can't run like I could when I was 12. (She doesn't really need to run like she was 12 anymore, and if fact, doesn't even like to run.)

My house/car/office/purse/laundry/junk drawer/you-name-it needs to be cleaned. (Forgetting every other item and locale that she has been keeping clean.)

I keep trying to leave work early enough to see my son/daughter's fill-in-the-sport game, but I've missed every one. (Yup, she's a bad mother, making a living to keep food on the table, the car on the road, a roof over her children's heads, not to mention sports equipment in their hands.)

And this is before we get to the subset of the writer's life.

I've rewritten the beginning page 30 times, and it still sucks. (According to her.)

I still can't figure out plotting. (Maybe she's not quite James Patterson yet.)

Every time I start revising, I can't get beyond the first chapter. (Perhaps that is because she saves no time for herself to do the revising.)

I've come up with 20 titles, and none of them are good enough. (And on and on and on...)

I realized several years ago that however difficult, the key to successful aging (assuming this is not an oxymoron) was going to be accepting what is no longer part of my life, and rejoicing about what is a part of my life now at this age that was not a part of my life at an earlier age. 

So there it is. The refrigerator. I'm doing a good job keeping my refrigerator clean these days.