Pushing the Limits

The last two weeks have been pure chaos for me and I'm happy to say it looks to be settling down and the Lord has been looking out for us in a million ways big and small.  Just when I start to obsess about the little things I am reminded of what is really important.

Things had been busy but booking right along and everyone was good until about two weeks ago.  My husband was up at our cabin with his brother snowmobiling when I got a phone call and the first words out of his mouth were "My sled still has insurance right?"  (my heart takes a big pause here...).  Thankfully, my husband was OK.  The snowmobile on the other hand - not so much.  A freak accident where he was doing everything right and slowly going over a driveway his carbide caught on a culvert that was just under the surface of the snow.  There had been a marker but someone else had run it over and buried it so he was just following the trail and all the sudden ended up on his head in a snowbank.  If it had thrown him the other direction he would have landed in the road and it could have been much worse.  We did have insurance and finally got notice today that it will get fixed (it will be about 75% brand new by the time they are done) and hopefully in time for him to be able to enjoy the rest of the snow season here.

Last weekend, we were all at the cabin together and my daughter managed to get in a similar freak accident with her little snowmobile.  Again, she came out of it unscathed.  She had been riding around our cabin with her cousin watching and had been riding the same path they had been riding for 2 days.  When she rounded a corner on the driveway she hit a patch of ice that had come uncovered and it caused her to go straight and the sled to tip to one side.  She did the right thing and put her foot down and weight to the high side to make her ski go down but I'm not sure if she remembered to let go of the throttle.  Luckily, a bank of snow from the snow plow tilted her sled vertical and it sorta climbed into the lower branches of a thick pine tree so she ended up standing on the snow bank with the sled standing on its rear bumper on the top of the snow bank.  She had a small scratch on her forehead from the pine needles but otherwise she and the sled were unharmed.  

While these kinds of things do make my heart thump loudly, I would be lying if I didn't say I understand the need to sometimes push the limits.  As much of a planner and cautious person as I am, my mother could tell you a lot of stories about my need to occasionally push the limits from the time I was very little.  I can't tell you the times I have fallen off a horse (or should have).  My aunts and I used to gallop our horses through my grandparents woods jumping logs, playing horseback tag, sliding them down muddy embankments.  We used to ride to old gravel pits a few miles away and ride our horses up and down the steepest "mountains" we could find.  We'd sneak out sometimes for a moonlight ride too.  My aunt has a pin in her thumb from a back road horse race gone wrong.  Both of our horses took the competition seriously and grabbed the bit between their teeth and we couldn't pull them up as we approached the end of the gravel.  Her horse had metal shoes on and hit a patch of pavement as she tried to turn him onto the other dirt road at the corner.  His feet slid out to the side and they both hit hard landing with her thumb crushed under the saddle horn.  My brother and I had recurve bows and we would spend hours after school before our parents got home having bow shooting competitions and climbing trees - we did some really dumb things, lol.  I've gotten into trouble on my snowmobile trying to do new things too.

But those are the things that keep life exciting and break us out of the ruts of day-to-day responsibilities.  As much as it scares me that my kids might get hurt doing those things, I know that generations of my family have not been content to sit on the sidelines of life so why would my kids be any different.  Yes, we try to be as safe as possible.  We teach them the basics and slowly let them earn more privileges knowing they will make mistakes along the way.  My son wouldn't be himself if he couldn't play hockey.  Just like I'm not myself without my horses.  And my husband isn't himself without the thrill of a fast motor of some sort.  My daughter likes to try it all.  Pushing our limits is how we grow.