Food For Thought

Every school day we ride bikes to and from school. Lydia has been learning to start off without leaning on her training wheels to get going (by the way I took them off today and she is doing excellent). I never realized the great effort required in the "start" mode of riding a bike. I found myself losing patience as Lydia was attempting to get this new step of losing her training wheels down to a T. She began to figure out the foot work, but in the process forgot about her arms. She'd get her feet on the peddles but her arms were twisting and turning the bike all over the place and she'd eventually crash or run off the side walk into a tree or get stuck in the grass. She'd get frustrated and blame her bike for screwing up and not working right. I found myself repeatedly telling her, "keep your hands strong on the handle bars, if your arms are strong and steady you will not go off the path". It didn't seem to matter how many times I told her, she'd still crash and she'd still blame the bike, even though her arms were flailing all over the place like wet noodles. I even went to her, held my hands on top of hers and showed her, physically, what her arms were doing and then I'd show her what her arms should be doing. She has finally got it figured out but all yesterday morning I kept thinking about what I told her. How often have I been like a wet noodle, flailing all over the place, crashing, running off track, and blame it on something or someone other than the person who is truly to blame? How often has this happened to me and "someone" came and put their hands on mine and had shown me the proper way? How quickly was I to learn to be steady and strong (certainly not as quickly as Lydia did)?