The frost is finally bringing the leaves down. All summer I have been looking forward to using the Bigleaf maple leaves from the back to “mulch” the forest area in the front.
But I have been so burdened by all the blackberries! We can’t add all those fallen “mulch” leaves to the forest in the front because of all the “nasty blackberries” everywhere! All those “nasty blackberries” must be removed first!
But … I just can’t do it all. There is just not enough of me. I simply don’t have enough energy and strength to keep all those “nasty blackberries” in check.
One of the biggest mind-blowing things I have learned in our forestry class is that all those “nasty blackberries” are totally fine. They are native. This is their home … they belong here. The native trialing blackberry is the PNW forest’s own natural groundcover.
In my mind, this is how I thought a PNW forest is supposed to look.
It’s totally perfect … neat … tidy … and not messy. This is what I thought my forest was supposed to look like. And this is what I have been working so hard to achieve.
Here you can see what my forest actually looks like. It’s messy. It isn’t “perfect.”
The first thing you notice are all the “scraggly” blackberry-looking understory bushes. Those are salmonberry … which I have now learned are very important for a healthy PNW forest. Salmonberry provide food for wildlife (especially birds!). They provide browse for deer. They provide habitat for smaller animals, and protective camouflage-cover for deer.
The neat, tidy, fern forest does not provide berries for the birds, browse for the deer, or protective camouflage-cover for the wildlife. Messy is totally fine. In fact, messy is actually how the forest is supposed to look.
The very first day of our forestry class our professor went around the room and asked each of us to give a 1-2 word description of our forest property. Most of us used the words “messy” and “blackberries” to describe our property.
The general consensus among all of us in the class is that a “perfect” PNW forest is not supposed to be messy. A “perfect” PNW forest is supposed to be tall, beautiful evergreen trees towering over a lush forest floor of neat, tidy ferns.
In our lives, we try to do the same thing I have been trying to do in my forest. We have a picture in our mind of what “perfect” is supposed to look like.
We have a mental picture of how our job/career is supposed to look. We have a mental picture of how our family/kids are supposed to be.
But then life doesn’t turn out looking like it’s supposed to.
So we become burdened and weighed down with the effort of trying to get our life to look the way it’s supposed to.
But just like me with my forest … there is just not enough of us to be able to “control” what is going on in our life. Our life just keeps becoming whatever it is going to become. And no matter how hard we try … we just can’t “control” it.
No matter how hard we try to make our career “perfect” … the way it’s supposed to be … we just can’t “control” it.
No matter how hard we try to make our kids and our family look “perfect” … the way it’s supposed to look … we just can’t “control” it.
Trying to “control” our life to look “perfect” the way it’s supposed to, is as futile as me trying to “control” the native trialing blackberries in my forest. Some things in life we simply are not meant to “control.”
We are weighing ourselves down with a burden which really shouldn’t be a burden after all.
What are you burdened about right now?
For sure, there are really heavy things in life which weigh us down!
I’m not talking about those things. I’m talking about things which we try to “control” but no matter how hard we try … we just can’t “control” them.
When it comes to those things, here is my word for you today: Messy is ok. In fact, messy might be exactly the way it is supposed to be. Messy might be the way God intended it to be … on purpose. (even if it doesn’t look the way you had in mind)
Let go … and let life do its thing … and go with the flow.
And as you do, you will discover that you will be unburdened by things which never really should have been a burden after all.
