The capacity to be more

I've been feeling busy lately...not with resentment, just busy. As I walk through my house, I notice things that I need to do. As I look at my kids, I remember things that I wanted to do with them, teach them, say to them. As I think about my day, I remember more that I want to do that I haven't done yet.
Our library has this amazing program where you can bring a sack lunch and go listen to performers while you eat. (I remember my elementary school doing something similar, and I liked it back then, too.) Today, the performers were a harpist and a cellist. I knew I had to go. I've always wanted to play the cello. I played the violin for many, many years from elementary through high school, but I didn't really enjoy it. I secretly really wanted to play the cello. In junior high, I told my orchestra teacher that I would like switch, but a bunch of other kids had just switched instruments and we were short violins, so she talked me into staying put.
In college, I tried again to learn when I signed up for private cello lessons (beginning), but right before the semester started, they changed the prerequisites for the class: you had to major in music to take private lessons. I was so disappointed.
Today, as I sat in the library, Bogey on my lap, and a Bologna sandwich in my hand, listening to the sweet sound of the cello drifting through the quiet, I got misty-eyed. It was SO beautiful. And I wished, again, that I could learn to play. I sat for most of the concert trying to think of a way I could pay for lessons, and an instrument, or teach myself. I came up empty.

I went out to the garden tonight as the sun was setting and got the watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers planted. There are the last thing in the big garden to go in. I meant to plant them earlier, but we had company, and then we got sick...it just didn't get done until tonight. When I put the seeds into the ground I encouraged them to grow fast. Like the weeds. The weeds are already sprouted and growing. I spent some time pulling them out. I still didn't get done because there are so many, but I discovered by bending down close that the peas are about to make an entrance into the world. And the beans are already up, growing at full speed. There is something miraculous about seeing a seedling poke its head through the dirt. I want to pat each one on the head and say, "good job!"
They did it. They were just this dormant seed last week, and now they are a little plant. Not only that, they are going to grow into big plants, with the capacity to create more of themselves. What a miracle.
I get that I am like the seed. I get that I have potential to do many things that I am not currently doing. What gets me is that I WANT so badly to do those things, and I feel choked out sometimes by other things--little things, but things I have to do--like dust. Or dishes.
One of my little bean plants, small as it is, is already being choked out by weeds. I spent a lot of time pulling the troublemakers out and encouraging my seedling. "Never you mind those rotten weeds. They aren't important. You're the important one, and I'm going to do everything I can to make them die and you live."
If I was the seedling, and God was the gardener, I think he would be saying the same thing to me. Except, I've been looking at it wrong. The chores, the schedule, and the opportunities are not the weeds. The weeds are the guilt I feel when I can't do everything. I'm only a seedling. I have lots of time to grow. (Impatience may also be another weed I need to pull out. )
It's the capacity to become more that drives me forward. I know I can be more than this, so I try. It doesn't happen on my timetable. But it is happening. That should be enough.