Good Enough

     Skiing all day in the beautiful cold definitely wiped us out. Asherel and I looked and felt like zombies the next day. And it was a full day we had to tackle the following day. I love skiing but it is probably a good thing the season is short. I am like the walking dead the next day.  This is often the case with bliss. It is followed by crash.

     On the plus side,the mountain cold was exchanged for 64 degree sunshine. I stepped outside in the morning and felt like dancing. There is something about warmth after frigid cold that makes me throw all caution to the wind and do a jig beneath the clouds. And it was particularly welcome since we had trebuchet practice which must be done outdoors.

     For those of you that haven't followed my blog every day for the past two years, first of all, why not? Secondly, the trebuchet is one of the Science Olympiad events I coach. A trebuchet is like a catapult which flings objects through the use of a counterweight pulling a pivoting arm.

We had altered our trebuchet a little, and at the lowest counterweight, it was no longer flinging projectiles at all. It would anemically swing the pivoting arm, and the projectile would plop out of the sling 2 inches in front of the treb, or even and most frustratingly, fling backwards. So we set up in the lovely warm sunshine, and videotaped the fling in action to try to figure out why it was no longer working.

     After much top secret tinkering and adjusting and highly educated winging it and guessing, we finally got it to fling 2 meters.

     "How far should it fling?" asked Ben.

     "I don't know...probably a lot more."

     "It's funny how we are so excited about just 2 meters," he said.

     I thought about that. It probably needed to shoot 3 or 4 times that far, but after all we could do for an hour was shoot backwards, 2 meters felt like a gift wrapped in chocolate. Failure seems to be a critical element in savoring success. Even just modest success. Even dismal success. Forward is better than backward.

     When the Israelites escaped out of slavery in Egypt, even the little they had had in Egypt seemed abundant in the deprivation of their desert wandering. They grumbled that they would all die in the desert subsisting on just the manna God provided. They longed for the leeks and onions of their now bucolic memories of abundant life as slaves.  Their eyes were on what they didn't have, not on what they had. That of course bred discontent.

     "How'd it go?" asked Ben's mom later.

     "Well, it went forward, and so we quit for the day," I told her, "Sometimes good enough is, well, good enough."

Chronicles 20:12

Our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you”