Tender Mercies

Road tripping! My little sister came to visit me for a week this past month--and the cool thing is that it didn't take any convincing to get her to come. But while I was beyond excited for her arrival (which was delayed by 6 hours due to car problems), it took me a good while to actually adjust to the fact that my sister was not a little girl anymore. No, she wasn't the 15-year-old pony-tail wearing naive sister who would do anything I, her big sister, led her to do. Taking Selfies before it was cool. November 2005 Adjusting to a New Normal When she arrived, I saw the 23-year-old returned missionary, Europe traveler, college student working on her Master's degree in accounting, and beautiful young lady who wore her hair in a stylish yet messy bun with a light coating of mascara on her eyes and matching jewelry. My sister wasn't little anymore.  When your car breaks down, all you can do is act silly and wait for the husband (or Best Bud in my

Guess what friends?! I am the happy owner of a new bike! I can't believe it has been exactly one week since I received the sad news that my bike was stolen ...but I can't think of a better way to celebrate than with the purchase of a new set of wheels.  One of the purposes of this blog is to notice the tender mercies in my life because, well, I believe the Lord is mindful of each and every one of us and that if we notice  the blessings we receive, we will receive even more.  Can you tell I was excited as we drove to the store? On that note, a wonderful tender mercy that I experienced with this whole bike situation is that we received a chunk of money, unexpectedly, in our checking account the same day or so that my bike disappeared. It was enough to cover the expense of a new bike and our date this past Monday .  When Marshall and I went shopping for my bike on Monday, we ended up ordering a bike from Cycle Works because I wanted the step through version

After my bike fiasco last week , Marshall and I decided to go on a bike shopping trip on Monday morning. (I love Mondays because it is the only day of the week that Marshall wakes up with me because he didn't work until midnight or later the night before.) Instead of driving, we walked the 1.5 miles to the Sunflower Bike Shop downtown on Mass Street to check out what they had in stock. That was the second store we went to that morning. I just love that we are in walking distance to downtown!  I liked the bikes that we saw there, but they were pricier than what I had tested out at Cycle Works. As it was nearing lunchtime, Marshall turned to me and said, "How about we consider this a date and stop somewhere for lunch?"  Truth be told, eating out rarely crosses my mind because I know that I can buy groceries for way less than a restaurant bill. However, it had been about 3 months since we last ate out together.   So after he did some convincing on my part, I agr

I walked into the bathroom with my eyes half-way open. It was 2:30 AM. As I turned on the light I noticed a note on the mirror.  Your bike was not outside. If you don't know where it is, wake me up. Love, Marshall. I felt my stomach drop instantly and felt as though I was dreaming--was my bike really stolen? When I went back to the bedroom to tell Marshall, I started crying like a baby. He held me close for a few moments and then went outside to search the apartment complex to see if the person who had cut the chain had just left it somewhere. It was nowhere. When he came back he ran into our neighbor who said he had walked out to the gym around 7 PM and didn't see it. That meant it had been taken in broad daylight between 6 and 7:30 PM. I couldn't believe this had happened and I know it probably sounds silly that I was so sad. It's just a bike. Maybe so, but there was a special place in my heart for my powder-blue Giant bike. The super nerdy and super cute