Roughly three weeks ago I woke up to the perfect crafting plan. I had three projects that I was really looking forward to making. My usual trip to the craft store ensued and at 8:55am I waited outside the store to get the supplies I needed. As usual lots of other items that I didn’t need somehow ended up in my cart. About an hour later I found myself at my craft table realizing that I neglected to buy an essential piece of fabric for one project. Totally ok! I had more projects left. Unfortunately, the fabric paint didn’t show up as I wanted on the second project. Feeling fairly defeated I moved on to the last project. Again, the planets failed to align and I became bothered at the loss of time, effort and materials. Sulking I grabbed some scrap pieces of fabric and decided to try making a tiny coin purse. My hopes weren’t high for it since I’d never made one and if this attempt mirrored the others that day it wouldn’t work either.

In less than an hour I had a finished coin purse.

It’s tiny. It’s a little crooked. It’s imperfect.

Yet it reminded me of an important lesson. How many times are the small things just as or more important than the big things? After hours of working on large “more important items” the small unintentional item was the only success of the day. I began to think of the things I could put in the purse to fill the miniscule space, such as a key, vitamins, hair tie, safety pins, piece of candy, folded love note, pet rock, coins, earrings, salt and pepper packets, medicine, band aids, and more.

This little purse made me ponder how often small things are taken for granted. Things like gestures of kindness, a thank you, finding a dollar while doing the laundry, perfectly scrambled eggs, waking up (grumpy or not), the scent of a gardenia, ice, ripe firm grapes (rather than the squishy ones), lightening bugs, good jokes, air, or texts simply saying hello. Small things like keys mean you have something to unlock like a home or a car, vitamins mean you are caring for your health, folded love notes mean someone loves you, a pet rock means you have no dog hair to clean (hee hee). Metaphorically speaking the purse could also be filled with hope, dreams, and wishes. The small things that really are the path to the big things in life.

Each time I see my little coin purse I will be reminded that when things don’t go my way or when things are not easy I have to turn to the many small things that are right every day without any effort. It turns out that the small things are the biggest things.

PS I plan to use my purse to hold my headphones that live annoyingly tangled in the endless abyss that is my purse.