Frozen Assets

We have two freezers in the house: one above the refrigerator in the kitchen, and a second one in the laundry room in the basement. As usual, both are full of good intentions. Once or twice a year we remove the contents and sort our frozen assets. Today was such a day. Among the bounty we found two turkeys bought on sale at Christmas, cranberries left over from Thanksgiving, cherries we picked last summer and a few bags of exotic vegetables. “Exotic” in our house means a blend of anything other than peas, corn or beans. Also, we had a few containers with unidentifiable contents and a package of something that had been hopefully labeled as “soup fixings.” Originally, each of these things had a noble purpose.

As we sorted through the contents, we remembered all of the other good intentions we had left frozen over time. We still have many letters we intend to write, photo albums to make for the kids, a bird bath and flower beds we want to see in the backyard, exercise programs to start (again) and friends we want to visit. The problem is that the river of time runs faster than the stream of our intentions.

Every now and then we take inventory of our mental stockpile. Like the contents of our freezer, some ideas seem worthy of keeping while others need to be discarded. Even where faith is concerned, we still have plenty of good frozen intentions. At some point in life we plan to pray harder, study scripture more faithfully, devote more time to good works and speak out more forcefully for peace and justice.

No matter how hard we try to catch up, we still find good intentions stored in every corner of our lives. Fortunately, it is easier to focus on the positive and take comfort in the intentions that we have turned into realities. As we get older, we worry less about food as well as intentions that must be discarded as we sort things out.

Tomorrow, a package of freezer-burned “soup fixings” will be in the garbage can by the curb, and we will forget about flower beds for this summer. Meanwhile, we will add photo albums to the shopping list for this week. Having a stockpile of frozen assets gives us plenty to choose from when we want to cook up something new in our lives.