I don’t really remember learning how to ride a bike. I have vague memories of being in front of our house on our dead-end street, trying short distances with no training wheels… and then, suddenly, I could do it.
Years later, at Christmas with Sarah’s family, her brother Josh had bought a kid’s bike for our nephew and was removing the pedals. I didn’t understand why, but apparently, there was a growing idea that if we teach kids to ride a bike without focusing on pedaling, they will find their balance naturally as they coast. Then you add the pedals back on, and suddenly they can ride.
Years later again, when we had kids, we lived in Dallas on very busy streets. Our kids got bikes for Christmas, but we never felt good about trying to teach them to ride without training wheels because everywhere we went… there were so many cars and people.
A few years ago we went to Italy and my kids, who already loved pasta, became even more infatuated with it. Most of us eat the store bought kind…but once you have real, homemade fresh pasta…it’s really hard to go back. So a few months back, they wanted to make some homemade pasta. We didn’t have a proper roller, but we made it work anyway. Then for Christmas we got a pasta maker and my kids have been working on creating unbelievable homemade pasta.
Making homemade pasta isn’t incredibly hard, it just takes a bit of time and effort.
I once was congratulating a friend for getting their PHD and they said all it is, is having Patience, Humility, and Discipline.
I’m sure it’s more than that…and I don’t think that’s what PHD stands for, but I haven’t looked into it.
Over the years, Sarah and I have put together puzzles over holidays or times with family and friends. We’ve never been hard-core “puzzle people”…like we didn’t have a puzzle table or special puzzle mats to build on or any of the other puzzle accessories people collect. We’d do it here and there and enjoy it.
We hosted our extended family for a reunion back in October, and when they were here, we got 2 puzzles of the area for people to put together. My family loved them! Fun puzzles, cool design, and doable in the short amount of time we were together. On one of the puzzles, we got to the end, and there was a missing piece. There were nearly 40 of us…so it is not out of the question that someone took it to get the pride of dropping in the final piece. The people that (nearly) finished it did it late the last night and searched high and low to find the missing piece. No luck. Many assumed, myself included, that my younger son had taken it so he could have that privilege…he did start the puzzle days before, so it was a logical conclusion he was saving the final more for himself.
The next morning, we were cleaning up and packing up, and right before we put away the (nearly) finished puzzle, we slid it slightly, and the table had slight gaps between the wood pieces…and there between the wood, there it was. The final piece.
We have journeyed through sabbath and prayer and now we take on fasting. This tower is dedicated to the why’s and how’s of what February holds for our journey through fasting and how you can participate no matter where you are!
