Lent Day 34 (Tuesday)

Exercsise: Cycling 32 miles.  Since Daylight Saving Time started, Tuesdays is the defacto big ride day in town.  Folks will start showing up on Tuesday at the old Donaldson Center Airport (now known as SC-TAC) and rides will go out 32 miles or so.  The official rides do not start until next month, but many of us are going out there now and getting in the ride early.  It was a windy ride out there, and we weren't in a big group, but we still had a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to the official rides to start.

Verse:

Galatians 5:22-23
New King James Version (NKJV)
²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

Thoughts: Today was an interesting sequence of events that I can only relate as being from God.  The back story to today is that I've been really desiring new wheels for the bike for months now.  And by months, I mean since around October.  Instead of just going out and spending money I don't have, I've been attempting to keep my cycling to a budget, however.  I've been putting a little bit away into a savings account every paycheck, and using that for my cycling expenses.  The issue has been that as my cycling habit has increased, so has the costs to keep it going.  The fact that I've had to replace my cycling clothes twice in the past year doesn't help, and cycling clothes aren't cheap (that plus baggy spandex isn't comfortable on rides).  

Fast Forward to last Thursday - the local bike shop has merged with a larger corporation, and they have been running a huge clearance sale on all of the back stock of bikes as a promotion.  It started up  more questioning on affording bike upgrades between my wife and I, but we decided that we would pray on it and see if they get more bikes in.  If they did, and what they got in would be a good long term upgrade for me, then we'd try to afford getting it and then we'd use my current bike for her or our oldest.  Neither of them are all that interested in riding a road bike at this point, but it would be available to use.  I started really praying over if it was a good move, as it would be a cost we really didn't need, and really the only major upgrade I currently need on my current bike is wheels.  For a lot less I could get wheels I really wanted and buy or build a hybrid bike for Christy to use so we could all ride.  

Monday after work I stopped by the bike shop and talked to the owner for a few minutes, and poked around.  He told me that even though he had been hopeful that more bikes would come in, the supply of 2012 bikes was exhausted and they were done with the promotion.  This wasn't a real big shock to me, and unless a completely unbeatable offer was going to be available with major component upgrades I had already decided it wasn't worth jumping at a new bike, but I should focus on wheels.  I already knew that I wanted Boyd wheels, which are assembled here locally, I just wasn't sure which of the two tiers of aluminum wheels would be the better of the two.  The lower tier would probably work, but I wasn't sure if the upper tier wouldn't be more of what I wanted.  Again I prayed over it and let it not consume me, and I had rationalized that if I could fit the base tier into the budget with the sale of some of my Star Wars stuff that I had intended to sell anyway.  

This morning I was checking my personal email, and I had an invite from someone to connect on LinkedIN.  I typically screen this connection list to only be folks that I really want to be connected to, as I use it mostly for networking in my professional life.  I went into LinkedIN and verified the person, I didn't recognize her last name right off hand because I only really knew her by her married name when we worked together.  I approved the request and checked my inbox (which I rarely do on LinkedIN).  In there was a message from late last year from a friend of mine that was looking for a referral to the company I work for now.  I didn't remember hearing if he got the job or not, so I went on the internal job postings and saw that several positions that he would have applied for were still open, so I shot him a message to see if he was still looking or if he had landed somewhere else.  Come to find out he had gotten the job at the company, and used me as a referral so I'd get the bonus.  I did some checking on the procedure and contacted the person in HR that handles the requests, and lo and behold I was supposed to be credited for the referral, and I'll get the bonus sometime next month.  And that bonus will cover the difference in price between the base level and the higher end wheels!  

Through all of this, all I could feel was that there was a plan in play since October for all of this.  Me trying to hold to a budget, working through the needs, not just doing whatever I felt was right, and working in harmony with my wife on the household needs.  The move up here has been challenging in so many ways, and so much of what we thought would not be a big change has turned into massive changes for us to handle.  We're still not in a church home, but I know that we put the effort in to walk with Christ daily, and do the best we can to stay faithful.  We're not always perfect, for me often it's far from it.  What we are is forgiven, and loved.  As long as we can keep sight on that, we can see the blessings that we get as such and not think too highly of our own abilities and try to be faithful with all of our gifts.