Doing the Best You Can

A few months ago, James and I were talking and he asked me to come up with a way to track our scripture study and prayer over a period of years. He wanted something that would look good on our wall. The photo above is what I came up with. I gave him this calendar for Christmas and he loved it. We started using it at the beginning of January and we've had family prayer and scripture study every day since!
I wish I could say that reading and praying every day has made this huge miraculous difference in our lives. The truth is, I find myself just muddling through, putting one step in front of the other, and doing the best I can. We have a cabin on a river in northern Idaho. I love to swim upstream in the river. I swim like the wind, not even taking time to take a breath. Then, I stop, stand up and look around. I'm in the same exact place that I started.
That's how I feel about life sometimes.
You can run, and drive, and fix, and cook, and teach, and soothe, and improvise, and fold laundry like there's no tomorrow, and sometimes at the end of the day you're left wondering what all the effort is all about and what you've really accomplished.
Doing the best you can sounds so noble, doesn't it? It sounds like you would be zooming through the sky with fireworks shooting from your feet, astonishing the world with your abilities if you did the best you could. The cold hard truth is that a lot of the time, doing your best isn't much. Often, doing your best isn't very graceful. Or inspiring. At times it isn't elegant or polished. Usually, doing your best just means that you didn't do your worst. There are days when you're glad the world couldn't look through your window and see what your best was that day, because it definitely wouldn't astonish anyone.
However, I've come to appreciate the "just muddling through". I believe in the power of putting one step in front of the other. I've been reading about David in the Old Testament lately. I can't get the tragedy of his story from my mind. "There is a lesson there", I keep thinking. I've decided that the lesson, at least for me, is to be found doing the things you said you would be doing. What was David doing out of bed looking at his neighbors in the middle of the night? Why was Bathsheba bathing on the roof in the middle of the night? Why did David ask his servants who she was? The lesson is to be found doing the right things, at the right time, in the right place. These choices seem so small, but eventually they led to adultery and ultimately to murder. What does all this have to do with doing your best? If you're doing your best, even if it's a little tiny best, you can still be found on the path. You will still be making progress, even if it's an inch at a time.
So while my best doesn't impress, it doesn't awe, it doesn't sing and shout, I'm still on the path, putting one foot in front of the other, and I can be found right where I said I would be, doing (even in a small way) what I said I would be doing.