Utter Failures

When I was younger -- maybe 6 or 7 -- I learned to ride a bike. I think I must have been about that age because I remember Sarah being fairly young but I don't remember Charlotte being born yet, so we'll go with that. My mom must have been working part time because we went to a sitter's house during the summer. I don't remember how many days a week but regardless, we'd go to her house for the morning and early afternoon. The sitter's son was grown and out of the house but her daughter was in high school -- I want to say a junior or senior at the time. Sometimes she'd take us outside to play. So this particular day we were riding bikes and I decided to try riding without training wheels. Instead of learning in a more traditional way, for some reason, we decided that I'd start up at the top of their yard and ride down a huge incline toward the house and then turn at some point in there to keep going on a straighter path. To recap, the idea was

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ernest Hemingway We love traveling, and we knew that if we had kids we'd still want to travel. We're lucky to have family dispersed in different areas of the States -- South Bend, Atlanta, Detroit, Lewisburg, Charlotte -- and we really enjoy those trips. Jeremy and I have had long conversations on road trips, listened to audio books like Dune, Ender's Game, A Song of Ice and Fire (my second time reading it and his first), The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, The Legend of Drizzt, and more that I've forgotten. We're listening to American Gods right now. I've also sung him many renditions of Billy Joel songs -- he's always so appreciative of that. With Alice (who's almost two), driving at night has been the best way to travel. It's easier with fewer cars on the road and a sleeping toddler. But for

Why Me? A follow-up post to the original - Here . My disclaimer for all the things below is this: I am not perfect. This is meant to show a before/after comparison but not to say that I have anything figured out. Second disclaimer: This post is going to sound completely loco to some of you. That's ok. You might completely get what I'm saying, you might understand parts but not others, or you might not agree with anything I say! You're welcome to pass on reading this, of course, but if you do choose to read it, understand that I'm coming from the perspective of being a believer in Jesus and also that this is a retrospective on something major that happened years ago. Time so often gives you a perspective that you don't have at the beginning. Also please know that it took a lot of working myself up to write this because I'm a very private person and tend to not share this type of thing publicly, so please be gentle with your responses. =) 1. Empathy.