Spreading your resources too thin will result in weak results! In your life, aim for quality over quantity!
You’re limited in the amount of time and energy you have. So you need to create boundaries to make sure your resources go to the most important things.
I do NOT have a green thumb. When I walk through the plants at my local plant store, I can feel the flowers cringing. But I have an enormous yard that has so much potential that my first inclination is to plant stuff everywhere. I soon had to ask myself a “would you rather” question that I now ask you:
“Given a limited amount of plant food and water, would you rather have an enormous yard filled with weak scraggly plants or a small yard filled with beautiful, healthy, thriving greenery and blossoms?”
The answer for me is small yard. Every time.
Then I applied that question to all the stuff in my life that I give my time and attention to (not to mention money). How much of my Kingdom Assignment—the true calling that God has placed on my life—has been diluted by time and energy that has been diverted to too many things. Too many activities. Too much stuff. Resulting in a scraggly life to present one day before the Lord.
It’s time to put up a white picket fence and focus on making a few things really beautiful. It’s time to
Pull the weeds
Prune the weak
Pick your favorites
Pull the Weeds
These guilty pleasures are pretty easy to identify, but it takes some diligence to pull them out and toss them. For me, this category includes social media, too much T.V., too much news, junk food, time wasters. This might include toxic people or shopping. These get tossed to the outside of your small yard.
Prune the Weak
Sometimes there is just too much good stuff to choose from. Recently, I was invited to join a pickle ball group. It sounds like so much fun! And the exercise would be helpful. But I realize that there’s no room for this activity in my small yard right now. Perhaps another time this would be a perfect fit, but right now it’s on the other side of my small yard fence. Prune things or activities that dilute what’s going into the most important.
Pick Your Favorites
I retired recently (I know, it’s fabulous!) and it opened up more hours in my day. You know how it goes, activities expand to fill the available time. So again, Big Yard/Small Yard thinking had to come into play. Of the good things available to participate in, of the good things that would legitimately fit into my “Ways,” which ones most resonate with my heart and the way God designed me? My answer: teaching, writing, art/craft. If I were to choose pickle ball, something else would have to leave.
Oh, the freedom of having a small yard! Metaphorically. My actual yard is still enormous, but I concentrate on one or two small flower beds. I’m free to identify things that are outside the boundary of my small yard life and say “no, thank you” to them, while I give my limited time and energy to making the special things inside my small yard beautiful, to the glory of God.
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