Lesson from a Very Big Rock

Lesson from a Very Big Rock

Well, maybe not this BIG...but big.

I was digging holes for shrubs I was planting on my property in Oklahoma. I had 10 holes to dig. On my sixth hole, I hit a huge rock with my shovel just a couple inches down.  This was not good: I needed a hole more than 2 feet deep.  If I had not been planting a line I would have just moved over but I needed a hole in that very spot.  I dug, I sweated, I panted, I pried, I pushed, I pulled.

I fell backwards when the earth finally let go of that big rock.  That is when my “Aha” moment came!  When I rolled over and looked into the hole, I discovered that I only needed to dig down a few more inches in the very soft dirt under that rock.  The hardest part was done!  Removing that rock created an equally big hole and the job was finished.  It actually took me less time to make that hole than any of the others where I had just dug past small rocks.

At that moment I was reminded that I often give up when while I am in the process of getting past my obstacles, not knowing that just a bit more effort would mean success.

I had been tempted to curse that blasted rock and make a deviation in my line, but I realized that every time I looked at that row of shrubs and saw the gap I would be reminded that I let a rock defeat me.  Living on that property for years I know that if I let one rock defeat me, then I am doomed — because it is ALL ROCKS!

And if I had given up I would have

missed this lesson:

Don’t let the size of the rock defeat you. BIG success is under the BIG rocks.

Carla