The Roots Are Growing:A Lesson About The Growth You Can’t See Yet

A few years back, I was living in downtown Atlanta and trying to make my house feel like a home. When I first moved in, the neighborhood was pretty rough. But I had a feeling it would eventually come around, and honestly, I’ve never been someone to shy away from a challenge. So I went right to work making the place my own.

The old chain-link fence that separated my yard from the neighbor’s had to go. Once it was gone, I started thinking about what could replace it — something that would still look nice but wouldn’t break the bank.

After doing a little research, I came across what seemed like the perfect solution: tall, skinny trees like the ones you see lining streets in Europe. Even better, I found some online for around $15 each.

“Perfect,” I thought. Those are going to look so good there.

I ordered three of them and waited excitedly for their delivery.

As luck would have it, I was going to be out of town the day they were scheduled to arrive, and there were Airbnb guests staying in the house.

“No problem,” I thought, and sent the guests a long message apologizing in advance for the extremely large package that I was sure would be in their way.

“If you could just move it slightly to the side of the living room, I’d really appreciate it,” I wrote. “So sorry for the inconvenience.”

It wasn’t until I returned home from the trip that I realized why the guests had seemed so confused by my message.

Sitting in the living room was a shoebox-sized box… with three TINY trees inside.

I laughed for a long time about that one, and about how naive I had been to think that three large trees would have been so inexpensive.

No worries, though. I still happily planted my three tiny trees and waited expectantly for them to start growing. I couldn’t wait to see how tall they would get and how fast they would grow.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The trees didn’t die, but they also weren’t growing.

At that point I figured I had probably just been duped out of $15 on some ridiculously small, dumb-looking trees from the internet.

But I have smart friends.

One day while a friend was visiting, he looked at them and casually said, “Oh, those trees are perfectly healthy. You're doing everything exactly right. The roots are growing underground. It takes a couple of years for them to grow deep enough, and then you'll start to see the growth above ground.”

I’m so glad he told me that because I absolutely would have given up on those little trees. I would have assumed I had done something wrong, or that I just wasn’t good at growing trees. I probably would have ripped them out and thrown them away and started over with something else.

But my friend was exactly right.

Those trees didn’t grow — at least not in a way that we could see — for two whole years.

For two years, I had embarrassingly tiny baby trees that could easily have been mistaken for weeds.

And then one day, almost as if out of nowhere, they started growing.

Fast.

So fast, I could hardly believe it.

Those trees are now much taller than the little craftsman home they sit beside. And every time I drive by, I laugh because I can’t believe how big they are. My embarrassingly small trees are now embarrassingly tall.

And I will never forget how long it took before I actually started to see them grow.

By now, you probably know why I’m sharing this with you.



Good things take time.

If you’re working on something you’re excited about but you’re not seeing growth yet, trust that the roots are growing beneath the surface.

One day, what you’re building may grow into something bigger than you ever imagined.

Just please — don’t give up on it.