bicycles and bruises

yesterday when i got home from the office i asked my daughter if she wanted to go ride bikes. heaven knows i need the exercise and she just recently learned how to ride without training wheels. there was a positive in it for each of us. at one point i stopped to visit with a neighbor. the next thing i know she was getting a little farther away from me than i had hoped. i knew i could catch up with her before she would find herself in a place of potential danger so i wasn't worried. she on the other hand wasn't so sure. she isn't skilled enough at riding bikes to feel comfortable with looking back over her shoulder. she just assumed i wasn't there because she couldn't hear my voice. i caught up to where she was and still didn't say anything. i wanted to see how she handled the intersection that she was approcahing. we had talked about it a hundred times "come to a complete stop" and "look both ways" had been drilled into her head. we had practiced it MANY times. she knew what to do....i just stayed behind her to see if she would do what she knew to do.

sure enough she came to a complete stop. in the process of stopping and looking both ways she actually sort of came to a falling stop. as soon as she hit the pavement she started to cry. i was right there and so i asked her the natural dad question: "what did you hurt?" she wouldn't answer me so i persisted. eventually she was able to communicate the source of her tears. she was crying because she thought i had left her. she feared she was all alone and suddenly that little street we had ridden down a hundred times seemes a lot bigger....a lot scarier. she thought i had left her all alone.

APPLICATION: i know every story breaks down at some point so bear with me. in that moment i realized a couple of things.

1. God is always close by. He is there even when He is silent. sometimes He lets us fall. sometimes He wants to see if we are going to apply what He has been teaching us.....but He is always there.

2. i wonder if i would even notice if He wasn't with me? perhaps i have become a little too self-sufficient. perhaps i have convinced myself that i can handle my life on my own terms and in my own way. perhaps i need to want God near as much as my little girl wanted to me near her.

go dust off your bike and put a little air in the tires. God may just want to teach you something new...