Two Hundred Dollars

Our apartment's parking arrangement is nice in that there is no assigned parking and so we don’t have to worry about limited visitor parking. But the bad thing about the complex's parking arrangement is that we often have to park faaar away from our apartment (sometimes on the opposite side of the apartment complex from our apartment!).

We don’t mind the walking. In fact we prefer walking! I walk to the grocery stores to go shopping and my husband, if he is not walking, roller blades to work every day.

But, if we have a lot of things to unload, it is pouring with rain and it is getting late at night, the parking arrangement is a pain! (-at least in our arms and backs anyway)

Last night we got home in the evening, after baby’s bedtime. My husband was coming back from a weekend backpacking trip which involved roughly 20 miles of hiking and I had been up late every night hanging out with some of my girlfriends and family.

We were exhausted!

And the only free spot anywhere near our apartment was a handicapped only spot. We decided to use it just while we unloaded the vehicle, and then we would move the car to a different spot right away.

But we forgot to move the car.

The next morning we found a notification about a hefty fine under the windshield wipers.

A $200 dollar hefty fine.

I tried not to think about how many groceries that could buy.

Two-hundred dollars!

My first reaction was to try see if I can contact someone and justify myself- tell them the circumstances surrounding why we had parked there. We hadn’t meant to park there! I could tell them about my tired husband with knees so sore that he could hardly walk, about the tired baby who needed to go to bed, and all the luggage that needed to be unpacked. Have mercy on a poor tired mother!

My next thought was to try blame my husband. He had taken the last bits of luggage out of the car. He is the one that normally parks the car. He should have remembered. It was all his fault!

But, thankfully, I didn’t do either.

I didn’t call anyone to try justify myself and I didn’t rant at my husband for forgetting.
Neither reaction would have been what Christ would want from me.

We had broken the law and I was just as much in the wrong as my husband.

I just need to continue to tell that to myself every time I remember how big the fine was.

$200.

Ouch.

Lesson learned!