Walk

I think I may have mentioned that Pal & Bubby like to wave at the Waste Management driver every Monday morning.  Generally he comes by either as we're waiting for the bus or right after the bus has gone by, but yesterday he was late, so Pal suggested that we take a walk to find him.  I love to walk, so I agreed, even though I wasn't wearing very good shoes, and off we went.  Along the way, I noticed some interesting seed pods, including some milkweed pods, that I just couldn't resist collecting for tomorrow's project.  The kids noticed some coyote or wolf poop on the road, so we spent some time examining it, then compared it to the horse poop in our neighbor's field.  It was a beautiful day for a walk, even so early in the morning, and eventually the Waste Management truck came by.  This was kind of an aberration in our day, as we've fallen out of the habit of taking a daily morning walk, but a welcome one--I miss it.

It seems Bubby misses our walks, too.  This morning, after the big yellow bus had swallowed up his big brothers, Bubby insisted that we needed to take another walk to get more milkweed.  Now, as I mentioned before, I love to walk, and today is another beautiful day, but I hadn't expected Bubby to want to take a walk this morning, and I hadn't showered yet.  This normally would be of no consequence, however, there was somewhere we needed to be at 9 a.m.  I agreed, telling Bubby that we needed to make it a short walk, so we could get home. 

Now, normally, I'm the one who is egging us on to walk farther.  We will agree, for instance, to walk just to the next mailbox and then turn around, but when we get to the next mailbox, I will suggest that we walk to the yellow sign, and so on.  Today, it was Bubby who kept insisting that we walk farther.  To make this long story short, we didn't arrive back at home until 8:55, and, since there are no showers out on the side of the road, I did not get a chance to shower before we had to head out to our appointment.  I did take the time to change out of my PJ pants, though :-)  I did find some more lovely seed pods, the kind that I had seen on a blog and admired, and wondered what kind of plant they came from, and hoped that I would be able to find around here.  And yes, most assuredly, these lovely seed pods were there yesterday when we passed by, but I didn't see them until today.

Isn't that always the way?  Here was a good thing, a thing that I love to do, this walk, a gift from God on this lovely day, and yet, it wasn't on my terms.  I wasn't expecting this good gift today, and I wasn't ready for it.  So many times in my life, God has been ready to give me some good gift, and because of my need to control, because I'm not ready to receive the gift, because it's at an inconvenient time, I have politely declined.  What?!  Seriously, if God wants to give me a good gift, who am I to refuse?  And yet, time and again, I have.  But today, because I was open to hearing God's voice in the voice of my 3 year old boy, because I yielded my desires and my agenda, I have received this beautiful gift.  Friends, what good gift does God seek to give you this day?  And will you receive it?