Tonight as I was preparing supper, I was peeling potatoes and wanting them to boil up really quick so I was dicing them. I had a sharp paring knife and held the potato in my left hand and was making long vertical cuts all around the potato as I turned it. After I made all the vertical slices while still holding it tightly in my hand I held the potato over my sauce pan and then began to cut the potato horizontally and the diced pieces fell into my pan. As I did this my mind instantly went back to childhood on the farm. I was standing at the kitchen sink peeling and dicing potatoes just like I was doing tonight but my Mom’s brother was standing in that kitchen and he had noticed my swift and accurate cutting skills and commented on how he didn’t know how I could do that so fast. I laughed and said, “Because I started cooking at age 4 and have been doing this a very long time.”

My uncles words immediately came rushing back to me tonight. I was standing there at the sink and this blog post began to form in my mind. Every time I dice potatoes I think of my uncle James. he bragged on me that night and encouraged me.

I began to think of all the other people in my life that come to mind each and every time that I do a task. I was ironing shirts one day and I would only iron one side of the sleeves and be done. One of my grandmothers asked me why I only iron one side of the sleeve. I stopped doing that very thing that day and I have faithfully ironed both sides of a sleeve ever since because my grandmother was very wise and she was a Proverbs 31 woman and I respected her and felt like if she said it then it was so.

I was telling someone yesterday that in the very worst trial of my life that a preacher we had at church had said these words to me and I quote:

Life is hard and a process. Anna, you are a diamond in the rough and what you are going through is a refining process. Bad things in life refine us and shape us and we do learn valuable lessons from those times.

Those few short sentences have stayed with me from those young years of my life until now and I have thought of them many times.

There are words, phrases, actions from people in our lives that stand out and make a mark in our brains that never leave us. I never really thought about all of that until tonight while standing at my sink.

We humans have a lot of power to make or break a person, a situation, a home, or a job and be a positive force or a negative force that will stay etched in memory for eternity until we die or they die, whichever comes first.

I leave all of us with this thought tonight………..what kind of lasting effect are we making?