I shared another short video this week. It’s just over three minutes and you can watch it here: My Lemon Tree Lesson

Or if you prefer, you can read the transcript below.  (But the video’s better … and if you like it, please give it a thumbs up.).

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Let me tell you about a lesson I learned from a lemon tree. Some years ago, I lived in Southern California and had this beautiful backyard, green grass, a few trees, rose bushes, and some other flowers. I enjoyed going out there, and then I thought, I would like to have a lemon tree. I had just begun the practice of squeezing lemon juice into hot water in the morning to drink, and I thought, I’d love to go out and just pull a lemon off my tree and do that. I thought, maybe I can get a potted plant to put out there.

Then my friend Laura came from Montana to visit, and I was talking about it with her, and we decided we would go to the nursery the next day and investigate. Well, the next day, I came home from work and I found on my table, kitchen table, a green, round fruit. I asked, “What’s this?”

Laura tells me, “That’s a lemon from your lemon tree!”

I said, “What?”

She said, “Come with me,” and she took me into the backyard, to a corner of my yard where this tree was planted, . . . beautiful green leaves. She pulled a leaf off and said, “Here, smell it.”

Oh! It smelled like lemon.

She said, “I pulled that green fruit off of this tree. This is a lemon tree.”

“No way!” I said. So, we investigated. We went to the nursery, and they cut it open, and they confirmed, yes, it’s a Meyer lemon. Well, I had no idea.

So the next day, I called the landlord, and I told him, “You know what, I just found out this is a lemon tree in the backyard.”

He says, “Oh yeah, but it doesn’t give any fruit.”

Hmm. I wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so I called my friend Chris, who knows all things about gardening, and she taught me how to care for that lemon tree—to give it lots of water, to clear the space around it, what minerals it needs, and I went to work, and I nurtured that tree. I got eleven lemons from it that year. I’m so proud of that. It showed me a lot, and most importantly, it taught me a lesson.

Very often, what we’re looking for, what we’re seeking . . . We go everywhere outside of ourselves. We get busy looking and striving, trying to find it when the answer is right inside of us. Just like I already had a lemon tree and didn’t know it! Much of what we look for, we have.

It’s in us—maybe as potential, not yet developed. It needs to be nurtured and watered and mineralized. So much of what we desire, it’s already in us. If we have that desire, it’s because the ability to reach it is within us.

And that’s the great lesson I got from my lemon tree, . . . that we don’t have to go looking far and wide. What we need is right inside us. I love lemons, and I love that lesson.

But … Lemon juice is much better when it’s squeezed into hot water, rather than taken straight.

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My question to you is, What are you looking for? Have you taken inventory on what you already have going for you? Have you considered all that you have—your talents, your experience, your passion? Perhaps you’ve been blind to it. Open your eyes wide, look inside, and go exploring. And let me know what you find!