Carrots, eggs, and coffee beans

Have you ever heard of the story of the carrots, the eggs, and the coffee beans? (Story taken from here, but there are many other places with it posted.  I'll summarize here.)

The story goes that a woman is really struggling. She goes to her mother and talks about how hard things are and how she just wants to give up. Her mother takes her to the kitchen and fills three pots with water. In one, she puts carrots. In the second, she puts eggs. And in the third, she puts coffee beans. Without a word, her mother just lets them boil. After a while, she turned off the burners and took out the food. She put the carrots in a bowl, the eggs in another, and the coffee in the last.  

"What do you see?" The mother asked her daughter. 

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee." 

The woman's mother brought her closer and asked her to examine the things in each bowl. The carrots were now soft. She broke the shell off an egg and noticed how hard it had become. And she sipped the coffee, loving the rich taste and aroma.

After making these observations, the daughter asked, "What's the point, mother?"

Her mother smiled and explained that each of the objects faced the same adversity but reacted differently. The carrots, which had started out hard and unrelenting, became softened and weak. The eggs, which had once been fragile, with just a thin shell protecting the liquid interiors, became hardened. But the coffee beans were unique...they changed the water and became something else entirely. 

The story goes on to ask... which are you? When adversity comes, are you more like carrots, eggs, or coffee beans?

I remember when I first heard this story many years ago. I remembered wanting to be the coffee beans. (Though in my mind, sometimes I switched the coffee beans to hot chocolate mix. Because hot chocolate is much better. And I didn't want to be coffee... but I could be on board with being hot chocolate.) I wanted to make the best of my situation by transforming it and becoming even better in the process. But I realized that I sometimes acted more like the carrots, becoming weak and losing my strength, and thinking myself incapable of fixing anything.

However, I came to the realization this week that I've changed from the carrots to the eggs. With various things that have happened in the past few years, I've become quite hardened. I feel like I started out soft and yielding, with so much potential, much like the egg yolk and whites inside the shell. But I've let hard circumstances make me hard as well. I've become a bit bitter and tough. And that hardness is interfering with my ability to connect with others and with God.

This is a tough realization to come to. I was sitting in my therapist's office, crying, realizing how hard my heart had become, and my therapist pointed out, "Insight can only take you so far." He said that because this was something we'd been dancing around in therapy, but I really haven't done anything to change that part of me. It feels too big, too hard to change. And he knew that he couldn't push me until I was ready. So now comes the time to ask what I'm going to do with that insight. Am I going to try once again to become coffee beans/hot chocolate mix? Or will I just stay an egg, letting nothing get past my hard heart/exterior, good or bad?

As I was thinking about this and studying it more, I came across a conference talk by Elder Marvin J. Ashton. He explains:

"The heart is a synonym for one’s entire makeup. We often use phrases about the heart to describe the total person. Thus, we describe people as being “big-hearted” or “goodhearted” or having a “heart of gold.” Or we speak of people with faint hearts, wise hearts, pure hearts, willing hearts, deceitful hearts, conniving hearts, courageous hearts, cold hearts, hearts of stone, or selfish hearts.  The measure of our hearts is the measure of our total performance."

So... having a hard heart isn't something I want. I don't want to ever be described as hard. I want to be described as "big-hearted" or "having a heart of gold." I feel like that my softer and kinder nature is what drew me to my profession, and so those would be amazing compliments to me. But I know I'm not coming across that way to people now, and I'm definitely not coming across that way to God. As we think in spiritual terms, a soft heart is one that will listen to God. The "thy will be done" is something I've struggled with a lot of my life, but even more so lately. I've been quite mad at God for the situations I feel that I'm in. I've stopped really working on that relationship with Him. My will wasn't happening, but I didn't want to go to His will. And honestly, I'm still not sure if I want to switch to His plan. Faith is hard. I don't see His plan. I have no idea what it is. And ultimately, I am choosing to follow God's plan, I'm just not going super willingly. Should I really keep trying to "kick against the pricks"? All that does is hurt me more. But my hard heart isn't just keeping God out. I'm isolating myself from others around me.

In a conference talk from April 2008, by Elder Gerald N. Lund. He said,

"Early in our lives, we learn to guard our hearts. It is like we erect a fence around our hearts with a gate in it. No one can enter that gate unless we allow him or her to. In some cases the fence we erect around our hearts could be likened to a small picket fence with a Welcome sign on the gate. Other hearts have been so hurt or so deadened by sin that they have an eight-foot (2.5-m) chain-link fence topped with razor wire around them. The gate is padlocked and has a large No Trespassing sign on it."

Even before these more recent trials, I struggled with letting people get close to me. I'm really good at keeping people out. But I've let these trials make my walls even higher, with even more locks, so I'm continuing to block people out... people that could help me. Love me. Be there for me. I'm not letting myself build friendships and connections. I can't fully connect with my clients when I'm often trying so hard to keep people out and not deal with my own emotions and situations. With these walls, I end up isolating myself more, becoming even harder and even more impenetrable.

So the question remains... what am I going to do to change this? It's great that I have the insight, but nothing is going to change unless I do. So I'm going to work towards changing from being an egg to being coffee beans/hot chocolate mix. It's not going to be easy. It's taken me a while to become this hard, so it's going to take a while to soften, as well. But I do believe that it's possible. And maybe, one day, I can become that truly amazing cup of coffee/hot chocolate, transformed into something so much better than I was originally.