Limitations

It is a good thing to know your limitations.  Physically, we usually learn them by pain.  Pain is a way the the body says, "Don't do this."  I have come to the acceptance that I can no longer do the ranch work at the monastery as I had done for the past eight summers.  The body ages.  I used to be able to go into the fields and lift rocks, dig ditches with a shovel, bend and twist, six mornings a week.  I no longer can do the same physical labor two days in a row.  This is not helpful for an irrigator.  Drought has spared me this summer.  So a bad thing, drought, has revealed something to me that will be a good thing if I stay within my limits.  It may not seem so good because it will mean change in the near term.  I may not be able to do the physical labor that this monastery requires.  One door closes and another will open.  Limitations can do that for us.