The Not-Good-Enough

Ever since I first tasted a baby carrot, I thought they tasted way better than regular-sized carrots. I mean, the fact that you don't have to peel them is great, but there just seems to be something about the flavor that's less...dirty.

So one day I decided to look up what baby carrots are, exactly. Were they carrots that had been picked before they grew to be full-sized? A whole different species of carrot that only grew that big? What I found astounded me.

There's a whole bunch of regular-sized carrots that are all bent, knobby, broken, and ugly looking. And as a result, they're not good enough to sell. People won't buy ugly, bent carrots. So farmers were always having to throw out most of these not-good-enough carrots. (They used a few to feed livestock.) This could be a huge percentage of their carrot crop.

And then one day this farmer named Mike Yurosek thought, what if we could make something of these carrots? So he whittled them down into smaller carrots, nice smooth ones of consistent size, and sold them. The idea obviously took off, and now baby carrots sell for more than regular carrots. Yurosek took the not-good-enough and made it into something even more valuable than the original.

Ever since I read that story, it has captivated me. It especially captivates me on the days when I feel like I'm not good enough. It reminds me that God can take all my not-good-enough, whittle it down, and turn it into something more valuable than anyone would've ever guessed.