Fine

Fine looks like a day when I feel like I'm checking most of the boxes in a semi balanced way. When I can have empty days as margins around the full days to talk to no one and avoid the peoply world but not fall down a people free rabbit hole where I am unable to help anyone else or myself. Fine is a tenuous attempt, never ending never exactly right balancing act.

One of my college roommates always said that fine was what you said when you were about to or had just thrown up. It was code for not so good. I try not to be that opaque. Fine is okay. It isn't perfect, but nothing is. Fine is changing the definition of success and realizing that some days success is having the same number of kids at the end of the day as at the beginning and not actually killing any of them. A friend's granddaughter likes to swim/float with only her nose and mouth above the water line. Very unnerving, to say the least. Another friend, whose husband is bishop now, when I asked how she was doing a while back, described that image of floating with only your mouth and nose above the water line. I get that. I have been in exactly her place. And it is unnerving. But to realize that despite the drowning feelings, you are, actually, getting air, is a tender mercy in itself, because it usually means Someone is holding you up to the water line. And realizing that it is okay that everyone see you there just on the edge, that it is showing God's grace in your life, that it might even help someone else treading water a little less successfully. That is probably the sweetest gift I received when DH was the bishop.