Life Is Like A ______________

Forrest Gump may have said, “Life is like a box of chocolates,” but what if life were like a drawer of cookie cutters? Imagine what kind of life could we create in each moment by picking and choosing what designs we cut into our cookies.

When my grandmother died, I inherited her cookie cutters. Some were traditional — snowman, heart, fir tree. Others were surprising. Grandma had a heart, a diamond, a spade, and club: one cookie cutter for each of the suits in a deck of cards. I remember all the cookies traditionally cut and lovingly made for each major holiday. The real treat was during those in-between times. I was always eager to see what cutters Grandma would use to design those cookies. Although the cookies were seldom iced, the cookies often had chocolate chip eyes and a lemony flavor.

After receiving my inheritance, I found myself searching through racks of cookie cutters and choosing those that would help me celebrate special times and suit my moods. Lighthouse, frog, dragonfly, spider, and a hand signing I love you were among my new cookie cutters. While I still used my grandma’s recipe, my cookies became a canvas of the moment; the icing, my paint. Traditional colors, unique splotches, even tie-dye often decorated my cookies.

Life, for me, is less like a box of chocolates and more like a drawer of cookie cutters. We form the dough of our life, choose the pattern to cut into the dough, and then paint the canvas of the cookie. We can follow our routines and be disappointed with the outcome, or we can creatively transform the dough through our re-patterning and painting. We reach inside our drawer of cookie cutters and choose how to respond in each moment of every day.

When I rest in the silence of my quiet mind, I unerringly choose the cookie cutter I need most for that day’s or even that moment’s cookie. As I paint my cookie, each stroke is an opportunity to radically transform my life from the mundane to the extraordinary. I choose to remain the same or embellish my world in life giving ways.

Life is like a drawer of cookie cutters. We have endless possibilities to choose the shape of our cookie and the icing paint we use on its canvas one cookie, one moment at a time.

What cookie cutter are you using today?

Vanessa

www.healingwillow.com