Challenge of Transport
May 23, 2022
Once upon a time, when we lived 2.4 miles from the sunshine bus stop long before the mask and partition requirements, I didn’t have a working vehicle. The kids and I bicycled to the Buzz Mart, parked our bikes & trailer, and loaded into the bus with exact change we’d pulled out of the taxis cleaning them. We’d make the hour ride into town, unload at Wildwood Drive & SR207 and stroll along to the homeschool co-op meeting place – which is now our church home! Any doctor’s visit or important thing like getting books from the library happened on that day and along the bus route. We even took the bus to two end-of-year evaluations at the south branch library!
Some of those days were the most fun outings our family had! I was able to dispatch (work) while we were about our errands. We played a million games of scrabble twist and catch phrase. We met amazing people and listened to their stories. We learned patience and gratefulness. We kept some strong legs up too!
Now, we don’t live along the bus route, which is okay. We also went from three vehicles in the family to one, then two – but now our two equals our passenger capacity. When we all go to church, we have to take both cars. I’m thankful one dependable hand-me-down (and totally amazing) 4Runner that is Christina’s car that gets her safely to and from Daytona’s Embry Riddle University. Christina actually named him Old Blue.
I’m thankful Louis isn’t hurt from the crumpled Toyota Prius with 400K miles (loved that car). He now drives a Buick Encore (He got talked into a new one… don’t get one, it’s been in and out of the shop with “unknown” problems that ended up being the entire transmission! We are “waiting on” a replacement transmission – and we’ve only had it 4 months. Problems and shaking started at month 2.) At least he has a car. We were supposed to buy a vehicle outright this time around… oh well.
Our new rental is only 4.8 miles from my work (and Christina & Kimberly’s) so we have biked a few times. I’m constantly being dropped off early to match someone else’s schedule. Everything within me is constantly trying to keep telling my own head: find the positive!
I have to keep a positive attitude as chief mood officer in our house. That is seriously a challenge when more than half my children are over twelve years old and super hormonal.
Finding the positive in only having enough seats only if we caravan? Actually, the skinny butts can share a buckle and learn to get along. At least there are only two workplaces among the five of us who do regular work. Becky and Christina babysit and along with Kimberly do odd jobs and raise parakeets and Guinea Pigs so sometimes there’s another workplace to toss in.
Finding the positive in every situation is challenging. My 2nd and 3rd graders learned that this Sunday! Paul and Silas praised God even when they were in a horrible situation, being punished by the Roman government for a crime they didn’t even do! Of course, in real life, not petty third world “problems” like having four drivers and nine people share two cars, God shows up to do amazing stuff like break chains, send an earthquake that rattles the foundations of the prison and leaves all the doors open, and results in the freedom of everyone and the salvation of the jailor and his entire household!
When I think about what is making it hard for me to find positives and compare that with anything real, I have to laugh. The things causing my frustration like intermittent internet at work, having to wait an hour after work was supposed to be over to get a ride home, or the vystar app crashing, seem unimportant. We are so conditioned to expect smooth sailing that bumps become mountains. I have to smile; we have a rental (roof), transportation to amazing jobs (it’s only an hour and a half walk if we really had to), food (that’s another story), and family! We have plenty to say thank you for. Then there are the bigger things we never really notice like oxygen for our lungs, humor to make us laugh, beauty in the sunrises and sunsets, clean water to drink, and love to make life worth living.
I have plenty to be grateful for; challenge of transportation will not get me down!
Thank you for reading!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart