I was at a women's church retreat last weekend when the topic of picking fruit with our kids came up over dinner. I sat there a little dazed, as memory bubbled up with affection. All those fruit-picking adventures in Oregon when my children were young.
We'd show up at the blueberry, apple, or strawberry orchard, grab a bucket, and head out.
We'd start picking fruit, and then...
One went in the mouth.
One went in the bucket.
One dropped without a second thought.
Whether it was a plump blueberry, a sun-warmed strawberry, or a crisp little apple, it didn't matter. The pattern was always the same.
(Yes, this all reminds me a little of Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.)
But it made me think…
I always wanted that bucket as full as we could make it. I'd watch my kids and quietly will them toward the fullest clusters, the heaviest branches, the brightest red berries hiding under the leaves. More, more, more.
But God didn't fashion us that way.
Some fruit goes straight in the mouth. It gives us exactly the energy we need to tackle today. Some drops to the ground, never to be seen again. And some gets dropped in the bucket, saved and stored and carried home for later.
Now I see that fruit the same way I see lessons and IDEAS.
Our homeschool, and our life of faith, is an orchard. The lessons, the books, the Scripture passages, the rabbit trails, the conversations at dinner, the chapters read aloud.
They're all hanging there on the branches, ripe and waiting.
Some ideas are blueberries, small and quiet, easy to miss, but packed with something good. Some are strawberries, bright and beautiful, the ones that catch your child's eye first. Some are apples, sturdy and substantial, the kind that keep.
Our children move through this orchard the same way they moved through those orchards in Oregon.
They eat what gives them energy today. They bucket what they'll need later. They leave behind what isn't ripe for them yet.
And they should.
The lessons that truly take root aren't the ones we pushed hardest or planned most carefully. They're the ones our children reached for themselves and ate on the spot, hungry, unhurried, present.
Some ideas get consumed quietly and become the very architecture of who they are. You won't see it happening. You'll just look up one day and realize it's already built into them.
Some will ferment slowly into “jam” they'll keep and share with the world one day in their own time.
Maybe that looks like Scripture memorized at age seven that rises to the surface in a hard season at twenty-five. Those quiet verses neatly tucked into their subconscious.
And some will simply fall to the ground.
A berry drops from little fingers and hits the dirt. An apple tumbles into the grass. A strawberry gets set down and left behind.
And here’s what I had to learn: you don't scramble to pick it up. You don't brush it off and press it back into their hand. You don't say "wait, you needed that one."
You let it go.
Because not every idea is meant for every child. Not every lesson is theirs to carry.
Some things will fall away and that child will still grow up whole and good and exactly who they were meant to be, without ever picking up that particular piece of fruit.
It was never theirs to begin with.
The dropped berry is not a failure of the orchard.
It is not a failure of your child.
And mama, it is not a failure of YOU.
So I’ve come to terms with the fact that it is not my job to fill their bucket.
It's not my job to do the choosing, the sorting, the deciding what's ripe enough or important enough or spiritually significant enough.
I used to think a good homeschool day meant a full bucket. A covered checklist. Verses memorized, lessons completed, boxes ticked.
But that's not how children grow.
It's God's job to be the orchard. My job is just to be the branch, the hands and feet of Jesus, stretched out and offering what I have.
To be fruitful and offer beautiful, colorful, abundant ideas.
And then to reach out with the very best God graciously gave me to offer.
I can only stretch so far. Many blueberries won't make it off the branch. Many strawberries will go unnoticed in the grass. Many apples will fall before anyone reaches for them.
But many, so many, will be consumed. And those quiet, consistent, diligent ones are the ones our children will grow by most, often in moments we never thought were doing any good. Long after we tucked away the Bible and the books. Long after they left our table. Long after we stopped wondering if any of it was working.
It was working.
We can't expect them to be drawn to every branch and every cluster and every bright patch of red hiding in the leaves.
We just invite them into a glorious orchard of fresh abundance.
And we trust that the right ones will be picked.
