A Lesson in Communication

Happy 2010! I can't believe it's here... or it's been here for a few weeks now. It's been an adventurous year thus far, I must say. The first new adventure was that I broke my pinkie toe a few days after Christmas (though it was in '09, I'm still experiencing the consequences of my clumsiness in 2010). It was not a fun experience. I've been asked many times how it happened, as if I had this interesting or funny story... I literally just ran into Chris's foot (shoe on) while trying to heat my breakfast in Corpus. Sigh, I'm clumsy. I almost wish I had a more exciting story to share. Well, the "exciting" part was that I fainted. Yup, I have a very low threshold for pain. I felt so badly because I totally freaked my parents out who already had a tough year worrying about my brother's health. Then... little miss Mariana had to top it off by fainting in front of them in their kitchen. Sigh. Anyway, I'm still hobbling around and have been given the nickname Gimpy at work. I went from Madam M to Gimpy. Classy.

Well, the real reason I was writing was because Chris and I had a lesson in communication yesterday. Our second great adventure of the year went a little like this...
We were looking snazzy and were headed to Boulder, Colorado for Chris's company party (dinner theatre...oooooo). We were on a busy road and my car shook (not normal for my car or probably any car). Chris pulled over on the shoulder as we couldn't accelerate and things were acting up. Chris looked under the hood, I tried restarting it and the car just wasn't budging. We called a friend to pick us up and we got back to the car with our SUV... as we were headed for an adventure. Chris tied tow rope to both of our cars and told me to steer my broken car as he would pull me home. YIKES! My heart was pounding as I was super close to Chris's car and I could almost see my car running into his much newer car and things getting ugly. Well, we connected on our cell phones (on speaker, of course) and off we went. Chris would tell me in advance when he was going to break and start up again. There were several times when my head bounced back to the head rest because the tow rope wasn't tight and it caused my car to be pulled very suddenly. But we were home about 25 minutes later and it never felt so good to be home! That's when we got comfortable and didn't turn on our phones again to move my car up a little bit. I realized how important it was for us to be connected and communicating after Chris moved up and I was still on "park." Not a good thing - though nothing happened to his or my car. I guess the lesson was always keep communication open with your spouse, even when things seem to be going smoothly. Always talk about what is going on... and NO don't do it while you are driving (though in our case, it was essential).

So, now I have to take the light rail and hobble a few blocks to work. It's actually interesting that this all happened like it did. I broke my toe and now I have to walk to work... quite interesting. I wonder what I'm supposed to learn from the whole situation. God is up to something.