Chocolate BLOOM, it took a good night sleep for that term to surface from my deep pockets of knowledge, same reason that I’m better at Scrabble (the word tile game) in the morning than tired nighttime. We are our best when our brain is the best. Chocolate bloom is not the best situation for chocolate, it’s the dried out version where the natural oils separate and although it is edible, it’s less palatable to the taste buds or visuals for a chocolate connoisseur consumer. It gets tossed… Expensive chocolate is no exception, the higher the percentage of cocoa, the less melting but when left in a hot car, it will be damaged, be friable and off-color from cocoa butter separation, still usable for something, but damaged. 

Granted that this is not the end of the world. Chocolate bloom is not impending doom.

What about us? Us when we are tired, cranky, off-balance, when we get older and our mental health and/or physical health is friable or easily crumbled? Not a fun or palatable place to be in or witness.

Now, I’m not intending over-simplifying our hard life realities to my musings in these musings, as such sadness exists in brokenness of human fragility, including failing relationships brought on by problems we can’t deal with. “Getting older —- !”, I’ve heard many say. But I simply want to re-encourage resilience. Is our death or a loved one’s death impending doom? Not if we take Jesus’s offer of forgiveness for our repentance. We can walk healed and whole again. 

Mr Roger’s (portrayed in the movie with Tom Hanks) advice was: Death is a human thing, therefore mentionable – and if mentionable then manageable. Granted life and relationships was not an easy path for him either. 

We are broken world creatures, where all of creation groans for Jesus’s restoration. There are unmanageable unimaginable unmentionable circumstances for us, but Jesus has seen it all, and sees it now. So we must tread lightly and be genuine and generous in grace to our family members, our friends, ourselves.

We all have something to deal with. We all have the opportunity for optimism and simply dealing (or not dealing) with what life hands us.

May we remember our chocolate bloom is not impending doom, and for the harder harshest of reality? Depend upon Jesus one day at a time, one step, one moment…

Amen

(And don’t worry about me, I’m simply being an observer of life of all around us…)

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Psalm 121 NKJV

God the Help of Those Who Seek Him – A Song of Ascents.

I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence comes my help?

My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.