It's Okay to Not Go Big

The other day, I made a post on Facebook, and went something like this:  "Fall garden planted...sweet potatoes, beans, and tarragon.  Fingers crossed."

It sounds like so much work when you say something like that.  Fall garden, planted.  It implies hours of work.  A sweet lady I know even commented that she didn't know how I had the time to do it.  I told her that it wasn't a very big garden.

And it's not.  It's six squares of raised beds.  The sweet potatoes are actually one sweet potato that I cut in half and rooted in my kitchen window, then stuck in the ground.  The beans and the tarragon were each one seed packet, planted by either poking holes in the ground or digging it up then recovering it.

An hour, spent in the sun with my 12 year old and 4 year old.

I've grown up believing that the only way to do things was to go big.  You made all A's or you didn't do it.  You get first place because if you didn't, you could have done better.  You keep a clean house or you have failed.  The list goes on.

So even planting a garden is something that becomes big in my head:  we need winter squash, and onions, kale, lettuce, beets.  We need to dig holes for fruit trees if we can find the room.  We need.

But we don't.

Sometimes, especially in the darkest days of your life, it's okay to not go big.  It's okay to look at a situation and say, This is what I can handle, and this is what I can't handle, and plan accordingly.  There is a certain kind of peace that comes with acknowledging your own limitations.  

This is a new lesson for me.  One that says, You can afford to wait, and be patient.  You can afford to back off, and let Heavenly Father work for you.  You can afford to rest.