A Full Plate

#119

Friend,

That Thanksgiving spread looked amazing, didn’t it? There was an abundant, variety of food, much of which was destined to become leftovers, and you were hungry. You wonder how you would get everything on your plate or how much of that hash brown casserole (or turkey or stuffing, etc.) you could reasonably place on your plate.

You walked through that line, filling up your plate, and you even delicately added a roll to top it off at the end. Can you see it? A full plate filled with goodness.

Now imagine you were given a dessert-sized plate and told, “Eat up.”

You would fill that plate up, but it would be missing something you hoped to eat, and not as much of your favorite. You would probably be looking at the full-size plates with a little bit of envy.

I was talking to my friend Bill the other day, and he told me something that I’ve been thinking about for a couple of weeks. “Aaron, most of us say our plates are full, but we must recognize that we have different sizes of plates.”

One of the impacts of grief, despair, depression, and weariness is that it can shrink our plate. Maybe you feel life is as full as ever, and it’s not necessarily because life is more than it used to be, but because right now in this season your plate capacity is smaller, and there is nothing wrong with that.

• If your plate is regular size, recognize that others have different sizes, and be gracious.

• If your plate is smaller, recognize that full will be faster this year than last year, and that’s ok. You can still enjoy the holidays, but you probably need to be more selective.

Love,

Aaron