Motorcycling Mamas

Last Wednesday, Saturday, and yesterday my mom, aunt and I took a motorcycle class. When we started we were pretty excited because there were 8 women and 4 men--we didn't expect to feel as intimidated because there were so many women and beginner riders. Anyways the first night was all book work which was pretty boring, but then things got a bit more interesting on Saturday and Sunday when we were actually on the bikes.

Fast-forwarding and skimming those two days, I was really nervous but both the instructors continued to comment as to how well I was doing on everything. They even told my classmates that if they wanted to know how to do the skills they should watch me! I tried my hardest to not let any of it go to my head, and I thought I was pretty successful... Fast-forwarding to Sunday afternoon when we were practicing for the test-- I sucked! I was getting frustrated because I couldn't perform the tasks, and had no idea why! :S Long story short[er], I felt like I performed horrible and doubted that I did.

I passed though. Everyone in the class passed, including my momma and my aunt. Everyone was super excited but I was just disappointed in my performance and just didn't want to take my helmet off because it'd reveal my tears.

Perhaps the reason I'm writing is because there were two other females in my class that made me crazy. Towards the end of Wednesday night's class I was looking forward to a two day break from this mother-daughter team, but Saturday and Sunday left me shaking my head most every time they opened their mouth-- NOT GOOD! I figured I needed to take better control of my attitude [something I was thinking a lot about at Bootcamp in June] so I decided that I wasn't going to let this lady have that control over my attitude. Thinking of how I could take this control back, I decided to ask God to be able to see this lady as He did. I was expecting to receive some revelation and think about how wonderful this lady was. It didn't really happen, at all. So my next request to God was that I would be able to imagine the great things that this lady has done or perhaps has yet to do. I remember telling God that I didn't even care if what I imagined was competely bogus, I just wanted to see greater value in this woman. It worked. :) And it didn't stop there. After coming up with some great things and influences that this woman made, my mind continued to drift and think about the other 8 people in class that I didn't know and soon I had made up great things about each person.

Moral of this story: I don't always see people with God's eyes, and with some people I really struggle to do it, but I've found that even if I can't see another as a whole as God sees them, I can find at least one thing about someone that makes them special and of course valuable as well.

I am working on seeing.