Daily Grace, Presence

Good Enough

April 26, 2025

This bunny balloon blew into my yard and settled into my wildflower patch earlier this week. Biscuit growled at it. He was not a fan. I couldn’t blame him. It was a little strange.

Sometimes it is annoying when people sweetly tell you to “just do your best.” Because of course it is almost always possible to do something a little better. If I spend all day on it. If I have more time.

But most days, there isn’t more time. There is reality, and reality does not lend itself to doing one’s best at every moment. So I am trying to reframe the way I think about this. Instead of striving to always do my best, I am deciding to be happy with “good enough.”

Because good enough is, well, good enough.

I had two days in a row at home this week with nowhere I needed to go, which is one of my favorite things. Home is where I would probably stay most days if I didn’t have to work. Because there is much to do at home, and most of these tasks are things that I enjoy, especially the outdoor ones. I like working in the yard. I like taming the blackberries. I even like weedeating.

Except I can take the weedeater out and work until the battery runs down and turn around to survey my progress and realize that the weeds look like someone has given them a bad haircut. My work is not smooth like the weedeating the professionals do. It’s choppy and uneven. It wouldn’t pass for anyone’s version of “best.” I could feel bad about that and go inside and charge up the battery again and head out for another round. Or I could realize that it’s much better than when I started, leave it as it is, and call it good enough.

(Because it is.)

There were other things this week that had to be “good enough.” Continue Reading…

Power

Caravan of Tears

April 19, 2025

It always seems like a miracle when the tulips bloom (and the deer ignore them). Feels a little like hope.

Let’s form a caravan of hundreds (or thousands?) of cars.

Let’s get together and head south.

We’ll drive through Mexico, down to Guatemala, and make our way to El Salvador. We won’t worry about cartels or bandits because we will stay together, so many of us. We will drive until we reach that notorious prison in El Salvador where they are holding a man who was wrongly deported, a man who Trump is refusing to bring back, although the government admits that he was deported due to an “administrative error.” He has done nothing to deserve this, nothing wrong. Trump is the one who is doing things wrong, but he is playing golf and eating cheeseburgers.

We could get out of our cars and fall on our knees in front of the gates to that prison and pray. Or we could hold hands and sing. Maybe others would join us. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference, but maybe it would.

These are days when I am trying to figure out what to do. Call my representative? He is a Trump lackey who is not holding in-person meetings but only “virtual town halls.” If he was going to have an in-person session, I would like to think I’d be brave enough to go, but not to scream or shout, since that’s not my style anyway.

Some of the folks at Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s session earlier this week yelled at her and ended up getting stun gunned and, a few of them, arrested. These folks were the ones who had the audacity to go inside and not be relegated to the outside area that they had marked off for “protestors” (which is just a word for citizens who disagree with her that she is still supposed to represent, no?). But if my Representative Kevin Kiley had an in-person meeting, maybe I could quietly make my way to the front, or go off to the side, and get down on my knees and weep. Just cry out. For all the things that are happening, especially during this Holy Week. To pray silently for justice and mercy and love to win out.

Would they arrest someone who was on her knees praying and weeping?

Probably.

But what would happen if thousands of us gathered and wept, bringing tears to power? Or what if we fell on our knees and were just silent, bringing stunned, mourning silence to  power?

Just something I am wondering on this night before Easter.