Epiphany

I have a list of things to get done around the house that could loop around my neighborhood twice. Well, not exactly, but it certainly feels that way sometimes. One of the things giving me the most grief has been the pine trees in our backyard. We have a postage stamp sized back yard with enough pine trees to be declared a national forest. No joke, at least 30 pine trees on a quarter acre lot. Our backyard has the potential to be lovely but because of this overgrown forest perched on a hill behind our home the backyard gets no sunlight so its grass-free and kind of dark there. This has never been a big deal but with a baby on the way I've wanted to get some of these trees down and some pruned so we can have light and get some grass there. We've asked a few places and the costs have been prohibitive. We heard its cheaper to get trees cut in the winter so we planned to do that this year but I kept putting it off.

Today as I sat down to watch my DVR'd Big Love, the doorbell rang. Luckily Jack was home (because I don't open my door for strangers!) and it turned out to be a landscaping group down on their luck knocking door to door asking if we needed work done. Why yes we do! They quoted us a price half the cost of the other estimates and they're getting started tomorrow. They also threw in replacing our pine straw in the beds and cleaning out our gutters (another thing on my to do list).

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with anything but this simple random event gave me an an epiphany: I worry too much. You might be shaking your head thinking I've read your blog for two weeks and I could have told you that. I know I'm a worry wart but today it hit me that all that worrying won't solve anything. Some things I can control and sometimes some things work themselves out [granted they haven't done the work yet so it remains to be seen if I can check it off, but I'm choosing to be optimistic].

Sometimes us worry-warts think that if we worry ourselves silly the bad thing won't happen because we're on guard. But today something I've fretted about since August just got wiped off my list without me making a single phone call. Something good happened while I was off guard. Good things can happen even if you're not on guard at all times. I think I can let my guard down a little. I'm worrying so hard about the well being of my son but I need to learn to be vigilant without the burden of destructive worry. I think I can let go of the reigns because today I got a small understanding that I'm not really the one pulling them anyways.