Learning - by Doing - by Sitting

Summer was kind to me.  With lots of changes in the NLSW, getting licensed as a pastor, and a baby (any day now!) to cap it all off - it held my attention well enough.  Still, the biggest surprise of summer happened to be an extra vertebrae that ironically frustrated my efforts to fully enjoy the aforementioned summer season.

Discovering that spare bone back there (pun intended), my mind became alerted to the gentle ache - that while not terrible threw my mental fortitude for a loop.  It's taken about 2 months to heal physically, and get over it mentally.  Along the way I've had a few new experiences - "rights of passage" if you will.

The strange; at the end of a ride, pulling onto my sidewalk passing a haggard, shirtless guy who called out even as he recoiled to one side, "Can I have your bike?"  I surprised even myself with the speed of my reaction - thoughtless, instinctual: "No!"

The universal; walking back in cleats after a flat when I forgot a spare, getting rescued from miles of cleat-walking, spending an hour trying to fix my first flat, and that first ride back out on a tube I changed myself.  Freedom.

The terrifying; a "Hells Angels" kind of guy on a polished hog made a last minute left in front of me.  He wasn't looking.  I was resting my neck for a split second - staring at my spinning ankles - and when I looked up it was almost too late.  My tires squeaked, leaving rubber on the road.  It was much closer than I ever want to experience again; inches.  

Although I might call it adventure, Jo wouldn't be happy to hear about my afternoon 'endo' at 30mph.

Of course, if you're not a rider yourself, these things aren't half as interesting as they are to me.  What I discovered  this summer was an underlying fear, an insecurity.  "What if I'm doomed to life on the couch?  What if despite a fortitude for fitness, I'm unable, and slowly degenerate into neglect and apathy?"  This battle has been as much mental as it has been flesh and blood.

Getting back into some speed work last week, thinking over how well I'd recovered, the verse in 2 Corinthians came to mind: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  As things do while riding - it began to just run through my mind over and over, until I added my own piece to the finish - "the new has come in me."

That 'newness' is more encompassing than any of us fully realize, not limited to our physical bodies or occasional circumstances, but the depths of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  Thanks God.  My summer journey of bike and bone, mind and spirit helped me remember anew; "I will not fear, He holds it all."