Intended Harm: An Unexpected Gift

My husband and I attend this marvelous church in the Central Florida area and we've been participating in this weekly class called MCU, which stands for Marriage Care University. I highly recommend it. It's helped us grow closer and more tolerable of each other. :) They gave us an assignment last week to rate about 100 different activities. Out of all of these activities we had to find 20 that we would start doing together. There were a bunch on there that we already do, like, go to the movies; go out to dinner; take a walk. But there were quite a lot that we just don't do together. We've discovered that we'd both be interested in taking ballroom dancing classes. Who knew?!? We've also discovered we'd like to attend more concerts and plays. But there were three things in particular that we decided we'd start doing first. My husband's more of an outdoor guy where as I'm more of an air conditioned loving, indoor kind of gal. This is Florida after all. Since he's always doing the indoor things that I like, I chose to start with outdoor activities. First, we'd start with tennis. I knew he wanted to play tennis with me because he sprang this on me in the middle of summer when it was 100* in the shade. I said I would but it would have to wait until fall/winter when it's only 80* in the shade. So today we played our first "game" of tennis. I say "game" because it only lasted 30 minutes and I was just so happy to hit it over the net and be able to return the ball to him once or twice. Baby steps people. Baby steps. The next thing we were going to do was buy new roller blades and go rollerblading together. This was something we used to do together 20+ years ago B.C...aka...Before Children. The third thing we decided to do was to buy bicycles and go bike riding. Now if you've followed my blog for sometime you're probably thinking, "Buy bicycles? Why would she need to buy bicycles? Doesn't she already own a bike from 2012 when she did that bicycle awareness thing?" Yes, I did own a bicycle. It was my pride and joy. Long story short...I was hit by a truck when I was a teenager while riding my bike and as a result of that trauma and the trauma that followed, I couldn't work up the nerve to ride a bicycle for the longest time. Finally, 20 years later, I bought a $100 cruiser bike from Walmart and that was the first bicycle I rode since that horrible, life altering day when I was a teen. I decked that thing out. I put a basket on it. There was a water bottle holder, a speedometer, and even a portable tire pump that hooked right onto the bike frame. I loved that bike.

Look! Here it is! Oooh Aaah!

AND THEN IT WAS STOLEN!!!!!

I was heartbroken. Whoever stole my cheap Walmart bike had to walk right past my way more expensive road bike to get to it. It was horrible. That happened 2 years ago and I've kept putting off buying a new one until this week when we decided we'd start riding bikes together. Now we just needed to find the time to buy 2 new bikes and 2 pairs of roller blades, which you wouldn't think would be that difficult, but if you knew my husband at all you'd understand. He can't just go to a store and buy something. He has to do hours, sometimes weeks of research to find out which ones got the best reviews and which ones are the best for the right price. I'm exhausted just thinking about how exhausted I'm going to be by the time we get these things. Lo and behold, not even 24 hours later, my mother texts me and asks me if I'd be interested in her bicycle. She said she doesn't use it anymore and it's just taking up space. Can you believe that?!? It's like she knew I decided to buy a new bike. Of course, I'm going to share it with my 20 year old who recently totaled her brand new car, but that's another story for another time.

So, thanks Mom for gifting me with your bicycle. We will definitely put it to good use.

"A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed." Proverbs 11:25