If it Scares You It Might Be a Good Thing to Try…

Father and son at the start of their ziplining adventure!

 

Yesterday, as a Father’s Day surprise for both my husband and my children, I planned a day trip to the Pocono Mountains for us to go ziplining.

This fact may sound somewhat interesting, mildly creative, and reasonably thoughtful, until you take into account the following:

1.  I personally have not done an outdoor activity of this nature in about 20 years.  And even then, 20 years ago, when I did participate in activities of this nature, I did it because I was seriously goaded into it, or because it was mandated by my profession in residence life at a college.

2.  In my almost 17 years with my husband, we have established a fairly comfortable routine… he plans surprises for us, I am surprised.

3.  As I have mentioned in way too many posts, I have been, until very recently, quite content with my sedentary lifestyle.  I genuinely look forward to night-time TV watching with my family, and I make no apologies for it.

So when you factor in these points in, the starting sentence of this post becomes quite startling, even to me.  But, as is often said in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, once you achieve sobriety, all doors are open to you.  And I feel it, I really do, so what the hell!  Ziplining has always seemed interesting to me, so what reason is there not to try it?

And it was a fantastic day.  The weather was unbelievably perfect for it, the drive to the resort was enjoyable, and not nearly as long as I thought it would be, and it was the first time any of us had ever done this activity before, so it was a cool thing for us to do together as a family.

Besides the excitement of the day, there were some interesting lessons for me in the planning of the day.  I realized the extent to which I rely on my husband to make decisions for our family, and the consequential extent to which I take a back seat.  I never thought of myself in this way, until I made, no lie, at least a dozen phone calls to the two resorts I was considering for the day.  I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to just give up, and ask my husband to cast the deciding vote.  And then I realized… has it really come to this?  Am I incapable of planning and executing a day trip for my family?  So I put on my big girl pants, I pulled the trigger…

And we had a blast.  On the way home, my husband told me how much he appreciated the day, spending it as a family, but he also appreciated the initiative I took, he hasn’t seen that side of me in a long time.

Priceless.

Today’s Miracle:

I feel slightly guilty writing this, and because I feel guilty I will write it in the most diplomatic way possible:  today’s miracle is that I was able to step in and chair the meeting I started, as the person who “signed up” for the June commitment did not show up.  It was an awesome meeting, with 10 attendees, and everyone had something significant to share, it was a fantastic way to start a Monday morning.