Challenges

Sometimes being in over your head is the best place for one to be.

How else do you know how tall you can stand? Or how much you can grow. (OK, cheesy fifth grade teacher type talk, but those elementary school teachs know what they are talking about.)

All I've been asking for this year is to be challenged in some capacity. Of course when it really happens and I am crying that I can't handle this and everything seems to put me into a dizzying state it seems like the worst place ever. But without (re)learning about AC power systems and battery banks and blown fuses and creeping seeping invisible gas issues and which stitches are important, would I be as challenged doing anything else in this moment?

So I wipe my tears with grimy under the fingernail hands and set to pages of lists. To action. To more challenges. To looking up at the night sky through the companionway knowing how lucky I am to sleep in a small boat with clanging halyards and a soon to be waning gibbous moon overhead.

And like the successful stringing of messenger lines to replace running rigging, to more small triumphs and more perfect challenges.