A lesson learned...

I have debated on whether I should share the lesson I recently learned. No, it is not a lesson on parenthood or marriage. Something more simple than that. But it is a lesson that I have thought about many times since. So here goes:

The Lesson? There is not enough pine straw in Florida to have a piece stuck in the wood of the deck.

How did I learn this? Well, Sunday afternoon Ayda was playing on the deck outside. She loves to just run around out there. Kevin and I were standing by the stairs guarding them and chatting. I looked down and saw a piece of "pine straw" sticking out of the railing and picked at it. How many times have I done that in Georgia? Yea. Well about three seconds later Kevin said "hey look. A lizard." And about two seconds after that my heart sank as I realized I didn't pick off a piece of pine straw, I broke off about 1/2 an inch of this poor lizard's tail. I immediately felt horrible. And in true Rebekah fashion I got down on the ground to find the piece I broke off and confirmed it was indeed the end of the tail. I was a little grossed out, who wouldn't be? But more than that I was so sad that I totally ruined that lizard's day. Abby, my precious niece, came to mind when something similar happened to her. My sister in law wrote about it in her blog. Abby and I have similar hearts for the hurting and I think I felt much like she did in this post. Then I looked around our house and realized there is not even any pine straw around. Insult to injury right there, but a lesson was learned.

This is not the lizard whose tail I broke, but he looks very similar to him. So here is a tribute to the poor little buddy!

And to finish, this is the railing where all this happened. Do you see any pine straw around?