One year I was a little short on garden cash but I really wanted to have some flowers blooming in the spring and summer. I decided to go with seeds. More iffy and subject to hungry birds and digging squirrels, but less expensive than buying live plants. Most garden departments don’t carry a wide selection of orange perennial seeds … but I discovered some orange butterfly weed so I bought several packets and planted them in a large pot. That season I noticed some little plants coming up among some known weeds but they didn’t look much like the picture on the packet. Assuming they were another random type of weed, I pulled them up. The next year, those same plants began coming up and I pulled them out again.

I bet you know where I’m going with this.

This spring they came back once again, a little hardier and even more of them this time. I decided to let them grow and see what would happen. You can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when they branched into the bush you see above and those beautiful little yellow-hearted orange blossoms opened up. And they do attract butterflies!

So what’s the design lesson here? What’s the writing takeaway?

Follow an idea through until you’re positive you’ve exhausted its possibilities. A sprout of an idea can turn into something amazing. Sometimes we give up on things too early. We decide the book’s never going to happen or no one will want to read it. We quit just short of victory, just short of the design that makes your client squeal with delight. Just short of the best-seller that begins your upward trajectory.

Maybe you’re working on something now and it hasn’t turned out as you hoped. Maybe your big dream hasn’t come to fruition as quickly as you wanted. Maybe you’ve decided your dream is a lost cause.

We all feel that way from time to time.

We have to remember it’s all about timing. God’s timing. Maybe you’re letting your worries and illogical assumptions get in the way of the germination process. Maybe you pull up all your seedlings before they’ve had a chance to show you what they could be.

Stop making assumptions.

Don’t give up.

~  @RozSW on Twitter!