“Good” is enough

Do you ever find yourself accepting the faults and weaknesses of others as human but can only expect perfection from yourself?  That was me for so many years (and, to be honest, I find myself back there occasionally) until one day…

I was studying the “creation” in Genesis, and I began noticing that God called everything from the dry land and seas to man, “good” (see Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).  I suddenly became curious:  Why didn’t God call His creations “marvelous,” “beautiful” or even “perfect”?  After all, these are His creations; doesn’t that mean they should be better than “good”?  This was actually blowing my mind a little.

As I continued to study, I turned to my Webster’s 1828 dictionary (my favorite when looking up words in scripture) and found this definition for “good”:  sufficiently perfect.  What?!

I actually felt a burden lifted off my back and shoulders.  If “sufficiently perfect” was good enough for God then surely it was good enough for me.  I mean, who am I to argue with Him?!

Parenting is a tough job.  We have successes; we have failures.  But what really matters the most is our efforts ~ and even in this realm “sufficiently perfect” truly is good enough.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

This morning I read something interesting.  A grandchild asked, “Grandma, you’ve lived more than 80 years now.  What changes have you noticed?”  The Grandma’s reply, “People never said, ‘Have a nice day’ until the 1970’s.  We didn’t expect to have a nice day.  We knew it would be hard.  Our life was hard.  Our friends’ lives were hard.  It had always been hard for us, and we figured it would always be hard.  But we were all in it together, and so it was all right.  Then in the ‘70’s everyone started saying, ‘Have a nice day.’  And then people felt gypped if they weren’t having a ‘nice day’ kind of life.” (Divine Signatures, Gerald N. Lund, 79-80)

I’ve often taught my boys that life will be full of the good, the bad, and the ugly ~ and that they could probably expect it in those proportions.  Yet somehow I still often find myself disappointed or disillusioned by that reality, believing that something is wrong when things aren’t mostly “good.”  I can’t get these Grandma’s words out of my head; I think I just had a huge paradigm shift.

Life is ugly sometimes.  Life can be bad.  But life is also good.  We’ve got to learn how to handle the things we don’t particularly like but fall into our laps anyway.  You’re not alone if having a “‘nice day’ kind of life” isn’t your normal.  But, remember, we are all in this together.