My sister, my mom, and I have a baby clothing company called “shredtown baby.” We make tie-dyed onesies for all your hipster baby needs.
When we first started making the onesies, the three of us were standing around the kitchen tie-dying. I looked over and saw my mom haphazardly wrapping rubberbands around the even-more-so-haphazardly folded onesie while she – yes, you guessed it – haphazardly smothered it in dye.
I just looked at her with my head cocked to one side and asked, deadpan, “Mom, are you trying your hardest?”
She laughed. Guilty. She was not.
But she didn’t try to cover it up. And, lo and behold, who was the one laughing when we unveiled the onesies the following day? She was. Her onesies – some way, somehow – turned out to be the cutest ones.
Dang. How did she do that?!
It has since become our family joke… Are you trying your hardest?
But the take away was this: Sometimes our best work is done when we stop trying so hard. When we stop trying to control. To force. To manipulate.
Man, do I have trouble with this. I need to learn to just let go sometimes. There’s so much in this life we can’t control. And isn’t that a beautiful thing? Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors sing, “There is a beauty in never knowing what the future holds.”
I’m praying each day to see the beauty in the unknown, to be present amidst an uncertain future, and well, to stop trying so hard.
