I had a peach growing inside of me. Not a little peach, but a ripe, juicy peach measuring at eight centimeters. Like any fruit in its prime, my peach needed to be harvested before it became hazardous to the rest of my orchard. Heaven forbid it should turn rancid, or – worse! – grow so big as to break off a limb!

“There is only one thing to do,” my orchard keeper said. “We need to schedule a peachectomy.”

Okay.

“And, who knows? Maybe, we’ll find some weeds to pull or some dead branches to trim. If not, we can at least test the soil’s acidity before next spring.”

“Peachy,” was all I could say.

However, I felt anything but. A peachectomy, you see, has never been on my bucket list, and I have always lived in hopes that my tree, fruitful or not, would never ever have to be axed or chainsaw massacred. Still, my orchard keeper is the best, so there was nothing left for me to do but to take her advice and to trust in the Lord of the Harvest.

Right around this time I received a package in the mail from a friend. It was wrapped in white paper, and next to my name on the top was a cut-out of an orange-yellow piece of fruit. I started laughing before I even opened the package, and I kept laughing as I pulled out an assortment of peachy-rific gifts: peaches and cream oatmeal, peach tea, peach lip gloss, you name it. “Here’s your ‘Life’s a Peach’ survival kit,” my friend wrote. “You weren’t trying to have surgery without one, right?”

Praise be to God, my peach was successfully harvested, pesky weeds were pulled, and my soil’s acidity was determined fine and dandy. I find myself daily offering up prayers of thanks to God for such a wise and talented orchard keeper and for such loving, thoughtful, hilarious friends who never let a sister in Christ feel alone in her suffering. (Thank you, Rebekah!) Life really is a peach.