Just a millimeter

Yesterday was a pretty good day. We are having loads of fun at basketball camp.

We get to see friends we haven’t seen in a while.

In person.

Not just inside the magic computer box.

I got some free time during camp to go to the thrift store.

After camp, and some strategic begging,

we went to the park with our good friends whom we haven’t seen in forever.

While we were at the park, tragedy struck.

Not anyone in our group, thank goodness, but a little girl who was there with a babysitter fell off the monkey bars and landed just the wrong way on her arm. It was pretty awful. Very broken.

It made everyone (in our group, at least) a little nervous to go on the monkey bars. That is, of course, a reasonable reaction. It’s a tricky thing sometimes to explain to kids how accidents can happen, but we can’t be scared of everything. You could be walking and trip and fall and land exactly wrong on your arm causing it to break. My mom was on a walk with my son a few years ago, when she jumped over a little ant hill. She came down exactly wrong and broke her ankle really badly. People get injured playing sports all the time. But we still send our kids to basketball camp, betting that we’ll beat the odds again this time out.

The truth is that every single day we are only millimeters away from tragedy. We are also only millimeters and microseconds away from miracles.

We cannot live in fear. We must step out in the world confident that most of the time the millimeters will work in our favor. Because most of the time they do. Even when they don’t, usually there is another further millimeter that we missed that could have been much worse.

Some days it might be tempting to hide at home under the covers. But really it’s no safer there. Roofs cave in. Ceiling lamps fall.

Eh, you might as well take your chances outside.