It’s 10am Saturday morning. The sun is casting it’s rays and throwing diamonds across the sea. Birds are serenading the droves of tourists walking down 14th Street as cars speed around them. Everyone is in a big hurry to get to the beach to swim, surf, and worship the sun. As all of this beauty and commotion is going on, I am lying in my bed wiping sleep fron my eyes as I wake up from a late morning nap.

I love naps on mornings like this. Just a few hours ago, I was on the beach with my camera snapping pictures, as the sun rose up through the horizon spreading tangerine, fuchsia and periwinkle paint through the buttercream clouds. This was the backdrop as Jeff and Jessica professed their love for each other and two families blended perfectly into one.

I enjoy photographing sunrise weddings on Tybee, but I never sleep well the night before. Even though I always set two alarms on my phone, and have never slept past one of them, I still have this great internal fear that I will over sleep and miss or be late for the wedding.

Last month, Ava and I planted a garden at the Tybee Community Garden. Most of us, here on the island don’t have enough land to plant a garden. So, thankfully we have a place where we can rent space and exercise our green thumbs.

After this morning’s wedding, I stopped by our garden to weed and water it. I noticed that some of our radishes are planted too close together which is keeping them from growing big and round like they are supposed to. It makes me think about our lives and how sometimes when we try to do too much in not enough space it will stunt the growth of everything.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate of doing everything you want to do and doing it when you want to do it. I’m not a big fan of putting it off till “someday”. Because”someday” just might not arrive. I do believe that with a little bit of planning, you can make room for “everything” you want to do.

Last week, when I checked our garden, I also found several plants growing that we did not plant. They looked like something intentional as they were bright green and had healthy strong stalks. However, they were really just pretty weeds that were keeping our intended plants from growing. I removed the weeds and now this week our plants are growing and getting healthy as they have plenty of room now that the soil’s nutrients are no longer being sucked up by the weeds.

I believe a major key to getting
what you want from your life is to take inventory of your life’s garden, making sure you are growing what you intended to plant. If you have too many “good” plants in too small of a space, spread them out so they can each grow healthy. Look for weeds in your garden, disguised as intended plants, they may look beautiful, but they are strangling and choking out the good stuff. To bare good fruit, you will have to get ruthless and remove the weeds from your life.

Tonight I have a sunset wedding, which may sound like a lot, to have two weddings in one day. But they are both small intimate ceremonies taking just about an hour each. The rest of the day, I can take a nap, relax at the beach and hang out with my family.