Struggling Well With Life

My girls make fun of me, and they mock my man cave. A year ago I had knee surgery, and the doctor told me that I could no longer run as much as I had been. I was told that I had two options; swimming or working out on an elliptical. Now, I grew up at the beach and I can swim, but not with technique. I have never been able to turn my head to the side to breath without getting a mouth full of water. And I am not about to go down to the Y and have some 15 year old kid teach me how to keep this old carcass afloat. So, I was left with the elliptical option. I tried one out and hated it. The work out was fine, but you didn’t go anywhere, and worst of all you aren’t outside. I also knew going to a gym was not going to be something I would ever stick with. The hole thing, and the loss of running actually had me depressed. To climb out of this funk, I had decided to get one of those blasted elliptical machines in our home. As I surveyed the house there was really no place one would work, not just because of size, but a place where the sounds and eventual smells would be accommodated (I am a man without a garage - which is a whole other story). Anyway, there I was, bumbed out, mad at being old and decrepit, with no real options. . . .until, one morning at 3am I woke up with a brainstorm. I have a shed/closet on the side of our house that holds the water heater and a shelf full of paint and tools, small, very small, but just maybe it would work. I measured and realized that if I cleared the space, except for the heater, an elliptical just might fit. Well, it was like child birth getting that machine in that space, but we did it. There is literally not an inch to spare. All of this to say, I was out there in the man cave this morning, and it was hot, humid, and I was tired and irritable, and mad that instead of running past houses through neighborhoods, I am facing a water heater that I never seem to catch up to, and I found myself very ungrateful. What I saw as a rescue and a gift, and a direct answer to prayer several months earlier, was not enough today. I forgot what He has done, and what He has provided, and in so many other deeper and more significant areas of my life. All sweaty and going nowhere this morning I started reflecting on all the times that God has met me in my moments of despair, and I gotta tell you - the time flew. Thankful too, for my man cave!