Dare to muddle through the messiness.

Let’s face it. Life just gets messy at times. A real heap of discombobulated junk. Kind of like my story in my Two Days Longer about the morning after my mom died. In numbing his grief and exhaustion, my dad accidentally tossed out his dentures in the kitchen trash—the garbage that sent me crawling hours later into the dumpster behind his gas station…in a bone-chilling rain.

My mud-packed tennis shoes (it’s what we called them back then) were slipping on the plastic bags crammed with rank trash. The gas station and the next-door tavern shared that odiferous dumpster. If one of the slick garbage bags ripped, I’d be scrambling in a putrid mix of oily car parts, beer bottles, and soggy fries. I pressed on, muddling through the mess.

I get muddling, which the dictionary describes as jumbled or confused, or as I prefer to say, “scooching.” Some days muddling is about all we can do…when we just can’t muster the energy on any level to wriggle free from the struggle.

But this is when we learn again to bend our fears and crank up our dare. We refuse to let refuse keep us bogged down. We take stock. We look for better traction and scooch forward. Our progress may not always look pretty (trust me, flopping around in a downpour in a dumpster was not my most graceful dance), but who cares about pretty? Muddle movements are beautifully bold. Dare to muddle on today like no one is watching. Wobble. Slide. Balance. Repeat. You got it!