The unintended consequences of our media driven world and the life long consequences of decisions that are made in a moment.

National Family Retreat 2016: In His Steps

<p>The unintended consequences of our media driven world and the life long consequences of decisions that are made in a moment.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Restoration International

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Unintended Consequences

It's great to be here at the first National Family Retreat.

We're so glad that you're here to be a part of it with us.

And tonight we're going to be talking about something that, well, it's titled Unintentional Consequences.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about.

Things that we end up doing many times because we don't pay attention or we don't really know where this decision or these choices are going to take us.

I remember we were doing a bit of an experiment in Boulder City, Nevada, Southern Nevada, the sunniest place, the best solar place in the nation.

And we, after having broken my shoulder here at the the retreat in 2011 I Said to my dear wife as we're walking and talking 1 day Why don't we try out being snowbirds?

Can't really be dealing with the snow and the ice and all that stuff.

My surgeon said, you can't ever fall on this because I have a titanium shoulder.

And you thought it was a pretty good idea.

Ladies, we got to give our husbands credit.

And for our entire married life, we lived in the northern climate, the northern states, where you get sunshine in the summer and clouds in the winter.

And every winter, I just craved to have sunshine.

So when he told me that this day we were walking in Montana, I thought, that is an incredible idea.

I couldn't even believe that he would have such a great idea.

I was ready to go Well fast forward we were there for 5 months living in an RV and near the very end of that time I had been morning by morning going out and walking and running on this bike path that was near the RV place where we were staying.

And it was such a wonderful experience for me.

I would come back and tell my wife, I've never experienced anything like this in my entire life.

I would go out there and I would just be talking to the Lord outside.

Rarely did I ever run into anybody early in the morning and I'm just saying, Lord, thank you.

No, I wasn't running the whole thing or walking the whole thing.

But I said to my wife, we have got to ride this bike trail at least 1 time before we leave Boulder City.

Now, we had written pieces of it, parts of it, sections of it.

But his idea, you remember I said how good guys ideas can be, right?

Now his idea was we're going to do the whole 26 mile loop and we're going to do it before we leave here.

Well, that was, we were going to be leaving like in 3 weeks, you know, we were going to be done with our 5 months there.

I started getting nervous because I thought, wow, I may be able to do the 26 miles but I may not be able to walk for several days when I'm done.

So I said to him, honey, I just, let's do some warm-ups.

We used our bikes to ride into town and get groceries and do kind of fun stuff I call them lolly rides you know and we like I said we did some of the trail but anyway I said okay so 1 afternoon he said to me let's go today let's start today let's go on a warm-up let's you know do I don't know 08:10 miles or whatever well I also had another reason for this, which many people don't know, who know this story where we're going with it.

That day, I found out that President Obama was going to be driving through Boulder City.

He was out there to look at a huge solar installation, 1 of the largest in the United States.

And so I said, if We take the bike trail, we can go right past where his motorcade's going to be because they're not going to block that, they're going to block all the roads, but we can, you know, be kind of interesting to see that.

So my husband, he has so many great ideas, doesn't he?

Well not like we're really gonna see him but you know to get to see that you've only ever seen it on you know CNN or a place like that you've never ever been close enough.

So we're riding along and sure enough we saw I saw she didn't see she was watching where she was going.

And you want to know what the rest of the history is?

Some of you have heard this story, but it's going to be a different ending.

But I watched my wife go over the handlebars just a little bit ahead of me going over my handlebars.

And the only thing that went through my mind was not me sailing through the air.

The only thought I had is, he cannot fall on that shoulder.

All I was thinking about was my wife going over the handlebars I did it gracefully right she did it very gracefully.

I wish we could have had it on video at least we got something out of it and unfortunately, and I I Did fine, and I thank the Lord I I did think about my shoulder as I was getting up off the ground, thinking, oh, my shoulder.

But I was thinking about her, and I said, honey, are you okay?

Well, I looked at her arm and this isn't supposed to bend right here.

I used to be in radiology, and you didn't have to be in radiology to know that this was a bad break, okay?

I am looking over my shoulder, worried about him, and he's on the ground, he's starting to get up, and I say, are you okay?

And then I am pushing with my left hand to get up, and there's no push power there.

And that's when I look, praise the Lord, I felt no pain.

I don't even remember hitting the ground.

And when I look, my arms not, well, I won't be too descriptive, but it didn't look very nice.

So all I knew is to, you know, hold it back together so I could lift it up and get myself up up while he came over and helped me because my arm was like, you know, hanging weird.

So, the message really isn't about that story, but it was an unintended consequence that day.

And that unintended consequence happened because we were not paying attention.

We're paying attention to Obama's motorcade.

I mean, yes, so I've never seen a presidential motorcade before, but The disappointing news was that he wasn't even in the motorcade.

We found out a few months later talking with 1 of the police who was in charge of the motorcade.

Happened to be on a flight with us sitting next to my wife.

He said, well, I hate to tell you this, He wasn't in that motorcade that day.

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Unintended Consequences

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