A few summers ago, my family and I went on a trip to the mountains with a group from church.  While we were there, we visited Linville Caverns, which are limestone caverns in McDowell County, North Carolina.  While I’m sure there’s a big ol’ scientific name for all of it, basically you get to walk inside a mountain.

And inside this mountain, you see all shapes and sizes, and even colors, of stalactites and stalagmites, which are the big drippy things that hang from the ceiling and the things that appear to be peaks growing up from the floor.  The stalactites form when water flows into a cave and drips from the ceiling.  The water as it drips leaves behind calcite, which eventually with all the dripping creates this thing that looks like a big icicle hanging from the ceiling.  And then as the water drips down to the ground, the calcite builds up over time and starts to form a pillar from the floor.  Sometimes the icicle and the pillar end up growing to the point that they connect and form something like a column.

Anyhow, this is a process.  A long process.  Like years and years and years.  The constant dripping of the water, little drip by little drip, eventually grows something big. Something little like drips of water can seem so insignificant, but with time and consistency, it’s amazing what can happen.

I’m easily discouraged sometimes when I have a task ahead of me that seems so big or the mountain (of laundry) I have to climb seems insurmountable. I procrastinate or sometimes I just give up. But if can step back and take that big thing and break it down into smaller things, it doesn’t seem so overwhelming and over time, with consistency, I can accomplish what I set out to do.

So whether it’s losing 40 pounds or paying off a huge debt or just cleaning up the house, it we can be consistent, we can get it done. It may not happen as fast as we’d like – believe me…I’d love to wake up tomorrow morning and be at my goal weight without the effort – but if we can just keep at it, just keeping dripping little drops at the time, eventually we’ll get there.

Is there some task right now that you have to get done that seems bigger than you can conquer? Maybe it’s a small thing like laundry or maybe it’s a big thing like paying off a debt. How can you break that task down into smaller pieces so that with consistency, it’s more easily accomplished?