Did you know that orange slices smell exactly like freshly baked pastries when they burn in the oven?
I encountered this phenomenon on my birthday while attempting to recreate a Pinterest-feed-inspired orange garland to decorate my home for the fall season. Have you seen these festive creations on your feed? A string of twine adorned with dried orange slices and leaves of plastic or dried eucalyptus. The garlands that I encountered online must be created by oranges from Florida or another tropical paradise because I could not find an orange large enough to recreate the diameter of those grand slices at my local grocery store.
Even so, I persisted and my initial six-hour attempt to dry the first slices was successful albeit smaller than expected.
On my birthday, I continued the process of drying more oranges while cleaning and preparing for dinner with a few friends. In a classic move, I used some of the orange scraps mixed with cinnamon to create a fragrant brew to simmer on the stovetop. For a moment, fall was in the air!
My friends arrived and we talked while the counter grew crowded with the makings of eggplant parmesan. Suddenly it hit me! The scent of freshly baked bread or the warm buttery whiff of a newly birthed croissant. I have not eaten gluten-filled bread in three years but the smell never leaves you.
We paused our conversation to sniff the air and puzzled over the origin of the scent until another smell, the crisp scent of burning, overwhelmed the pastry scent and rushed us toward the oven. I threw open the oven door only to discover several rows of small blackened circles, my charred Pinterest dreams, returning my gaze from the baking sheet.
The rush of hot air that greeted us when we opened the oven door and an error code alerted us to the culprit. The oven’s temperature gauge was not functioning leading to an oven that heated to the highest temperature possible. Wonderful. What a marvelous gift for a more “adult” Claire at the age of 31: the opportunity to figure out how to fix an oven. But what an unexpected gift that burnt oranges smell like my pastry dreams.
The oven is still not fixed. Thank goodness for air fryers.
This strange incident rose to my mind as I reflected on the lessons that are shaping my life in this season. Burnt oranges reminded me that very few aspects of our lives develop in the ways we anticipate despite our preparation and most earnest labor.
I’ve sacrificed so much energy in labor. Laboring to force people to be gentle. Laboring to be seen as capable and good. Laboring to create poems and paragraphs that are fresh and relevant. Laboring to be organized. Laboring to be healthy. Laboring to be the best version of myself. Laboring for control over people, places, and things as a way to protect myself from the potential disappointments of burnt oranges and broken ovens.
But what an unexpected gift that burnt oranges smell like my pastry dreams.
We receive a daily invitation to free ourselves from the desperate need to compel and control every aspect of our lives. This practice of releasing our desperate grasp on every part of our lives gives us open hands to receive and encounter life, full and abundant life. The practice of letting go allows us to be free to live.
We are journeying through a world of endless variables and there is so much that we cannot control. We cannot anticipate when the temperature gauge will go out. When we encounter inconvenience, challenging emotions or interactions, difficult conversations with ourselves and others, unknowns, and complications, can we practice releasing these encounters from our control and our judgment? Can we embrace complexity and disappointment? Instead of fixating our attention and energy on avoidance, can we practice stilling our minds and bodies to turn toward connection with God and with others? Can we practice savoring the unexpected gifts of each moment like the aroma of freshly burnt oranges?
The practice of letting go is not a sign of weakness but a beautiful opportunity to discover the depth of life that we never knew could exist while we tried to keep everyone and everything in a contained environment. Surrender does not mean that we are careless or that we journey through life guided by mindless compulsions. In fact, we feel more. We sense and experience more when we are not compelled by fear to assess the danger or constantly look toward the future. We love more when we can accept the gifts of each person and not force others to be what we wish in our relationship.
I am learning that the inevitable failure, disappointments, and challenges of growth are necessary and serve as fertile ground to sprout discovery. We spend so much energy laboring to prevent what is necessary and natural that we miss the beauty found in falling, in waiting, in cultivating and growing through the seasons of our days.
We crave the flower and forget her fall on fertile ground, forget her winter, forget the summer rainfall that fed her, forget the bud that held her until spring.
God’s invitation to the Psalmist still holds true: “Be still and know.” Be still and let the pain come. Be still and let your body tell you when the time is right. Be still and pay attention to the life that is all around you. Be still and know that God is present in every moment and you have no need to fear. You can be here. You can embrace your disappointment. You can accept your failures. You can accept their failures. You can let go.
“Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall” (Psalm 46:2-5)
Our external circumstances will always falter and shift around us, but within us there is a river of living water. May we be carried by it’s gentle current, may we be nourished, and may we practice being sustained by more: More than our self-care habits, more than our expectations and desires, more than our dreams, more than our careers, more than our routines, more than our own ability to cling and strain and fight to survive. May we practice being sustained by God with us in every moment.
Thank you for the kindness shown to me on my birthday! What are you learning in this season of life? I invite you to comment below or message me here on Substack to share your insights.
This publication and my work at the church in Tempe are supported by financial contributions from many of you. If you are receiving goodness from these words, I invite you to partner with me by donating here. You can select the “Allensworth Campus Ministry” instead of “General.”
A Prayer for Letting Go
Jesus, who considered not even God-status as something to be tightly grasped, teach us to let go. We pray that you will show us how to surrender every compulsion, every encounter, every moment into your care. We ask that you will allow us opportunities to notice the areas of our lives where we are desperately clinging to an outcome or an expecation. May we notice how we are expending our precious energy. We ask that you will invite us into the vulnerable space of stillness, of releasing, of acceptance that we will learn to be carried by your river’s current into fullness of life. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Beautiful words!❤️