Lent Day 31

Some good ideas turn out to be bad ideas.  This is a beautiful Friday afternoon in tropical paradise.  Unfortunately, Christy has a horrible headache and needs to be left alone.  This is one of those times where the boys and I get to spend some bonding time.  What a great opportunity for some fun guy time. 

I decided I needed to go exercising.  Let’s all three boys go jogging.  Knowing that neither of the boys can run with me, I came up with some arrangements.  Tyler can ride his bicycle along side of us.  Blake can ride in the trailer / push cart.  The dogs, well, they can be tied to the push cart to help pull it along.  Then, I might as well add some weight in the trailer since it makes for easy storage.  A couple bottles of water can’t be that much.  Yep, pushing a 50 pound cart will be smooth sailing.

It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to get everything set up and down the driveway.  Once we got out in the road, the good idea really turned bad.  Molly was afraid of the cart and Tyler’s bicycle.  Tyler kept going back and forth on the dirt in an attempt to find the “hard” dirt.  This caused so much commotion for the dogs and me.  Molly, being frightened, became an anchor on the right side.  Monte wanted so badly to run fast.  Since Monte was tied to the left side, I had a severe alignment issue.  This caused the cart to pull hard right which I had to compensate extra hard while trying to push this monstrosity through the sandy dirt road.  To make it even worse, the front single wheel kept getting stuck in the sideways position.  Therefore, I had to pull down on the handle to keep it off the ground.  On a difficulty scale of 1 to 100 (100 being the most difficult) this was a 92.  The only one that had a nice ride was Blake since he simply had to sit back and relax.   Tyler rode his bike really well, but even he noticed he was sweating profusely.

I learned several lessons from this fiasco.  One thing Monte taught me is that sometimes in life, the cart you’re pulling can run you over.    We get so preoccupied with life that we don’t pay attention to what we are doing.  Then when we get out of sync either by slowing down or heading downhill making everything else go faster, we realize we have lost control and get run over.  Another thing I learned is that when I am trying to get some exercise in, don’t bring along extra things to carry and push.  Each day is a new adventure that allows us a fresh start.  Sometimes we make it more difficult on ourselves by taking on too much.  Too many activities in our lives can be very difficult and make us loose focus.  Like they say, it is not possible to have our cake and eat it too. 

I read somewhere that God lets us fall so that He can help pick us up.  I am also aware that the most difficult challenges are certain to make us stronger.  When I accepted the Lent commitment I did not expect it to be easy.  I hoped it would be hard so that I could grow stronger.  There have been difficulties each day; some days it is harder than others.  It is through God’s strength that I will overcome these adversities in life . . . even if some of them are self inflicted.