My son has a penchant for finding four-leaf clovers. Sometimes he brings them to me by the handful. I always ooh and awe when he brings those tiny symbols of luck to me.
Then I comment that I never find any.
Which is true.
But truthfully, I don’t actually look too hard. I give up fairly easy.
But on this particular afternoon I decided to stop what I was doing, sit in the sun-soaked ground with my oldest, and devote my attention to finding a clover with four leaves.
I searched. And I searched.
My eyes kept scanning the green expanse.
My son, seven at the time, kept his eyes toward the verdant ground and found FIVE in the time that I was still casting my eyes for ONE.
“You and your Daddy are the luckiest people around,” I muttered to him. “I can’t find ANY.”
Legend says that the four leaves are supposed to represent hope, faith, love, and luck. And I was constantly falling short of the luck needed to find just one in our lawn.
My five-year old bounded over to where we were sitting, glanced at the grass, then wailed and stomped her feet, “I CAN’T FIND ANY!”
Then she bounced back to the slide. Giving up to go on to other tasks.
“No wonder she couldn’t find any,” I thought. “She’s not putting in the time to really look.”
Luck is like that sometimes, isn’t it?
We gaze around at the success of other people and get a little agitated when things that seem so easy for others seem so hard for us.
So we proclaim that they are just lucky. But really, they’ve probably spent more time pursuing that luck than we have.
Stepping back we can realize that it’s not necessarily luck, but perseverance and time that sets some people up for success.
My son takes the time to look and therefore finds the luck. My daughter, in this backyard situation, glanced instead of looked, gave up easily, and then growled that her brother was better at something than she. But in all honestly she gave up after one or two failures.
Lucky people often put in the time and focus.
But, as time was showing, time sometimes just not enough to acquire a four-leaf clover.
“How do you ALWAYS find one, Tite?” I asked. “Do you have a secret?”
“I just look for the squares, Mom.”
I jutted my head to the side and looked at him, “Squares. What are you talking about?”
“One, two, three, four. A four-leaf clover has four leaves shaped into a square. So I just scan the grass and look for squares. Three leaf clovers make triangles.”
Then he goes back to his task.
I’m dumbfounded. I’m thirty-six with a Ph.d and NEVER ONCE thought about the shape of a four-leaf clover.
So I start scanning for squares. And sure enough, searching for the shape of a square is way less time consuming and way easier than sitting counting all the leafs on all the clovers.
My son, as he often does, showed me something that day. Luck is often made to look easy when really it’s the combination of several things including: time and taking a different strategy.
The unlucky of us (my hand is raised) often give up and then attribute the success other folks achieve to them just being lucky.
And sometimes that might be true. But often we can stop and ask ourselves, “are we truly putting in the time?” and “have we thought about another way to tackle the problem at hand instead of giving up?”
You might find that you are counting all the leaves in the backyard when really you just needed to be scanning the lawn looking for square shapes. One of those ways is much easier than the other.
Try it sometime.
And how did I acquire this newfound knowledge that sets me up for being Lady Luck? I asked.
Something I’d never thought about doing.
In this situation I asked a master four-leaf clover finder. The luckiest little boy I know.
But there is another way for us to acquire knowledge.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.
James 1:5
Wisdom is the application of knowledge. I had the wisdom to ask my son for help because I knew he might have the answer. Then I implemented what he said.
When you ask God he will give you knowledge. Then you have to apply that knowledge in your life. How do you get wisdom from God? Prayer. Read your Bible. Quiet Time with the Lord.
I still think my son is awfully lucky, but it turns out–in the case of searching out a four-leaf clover, he has the two ingredients that set him up for success: he devotes the TIME and he uses his WISDOM.
And I’m so glad that on this particular day I took the time to search out some luck with my seven-year old little blessing.
He reminded me that often we wail about not having luck, but really we just need to ask the MASTER for KNOWLEDGE.
Sarah Philpott, Ph.D, award-winning author of Loved Baby: 31 Devotions Helping You Grieve and Cherish Your Child After Pregnancy Loss, lives in the south on a cattle farm where she raises her three mischievous children and is farm wife to her high-school sweetheart. She is a TODAY SHOW parenting team blogger, doesn’t share deserts, and spends days cleaning markers off walls. Connect with her on social media!
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So beautiful! And great timing for me. Thank you dear!