I am riding a bike again!

When I was in college at The Ohio State University, I tried for about 2 weeks to ride my bike on campus. It was really a good idea with all the walking I had to do, but the pedestrian and car traffic at OSU is a bit scary. I have joked that it prepared me to walk in New York City. It resembles that. What made me stop riding my bicycle at OSU, is I was riding in a parking lot and was hit by a car. It was not just a little “got hit”, I rolled up on the hood of the vehicle after impact. Fortunately no one was hurt. Really, that was a miracle, because I had rolled up on the hood of the car and hit the windshield. I got back up much to the amazement of the car driver and went on my way to class.

However, ever since that day I will admit I have carried a bit of a phobia when it comes to riding a bike. It’s not that I cringed at the sight of a bicycle or that I would never ride one, but I was just a little scared when I got back up to ride especially if I was in areas where there was a lot of traffic.

This summer my mom picked up a bike for me at a garage sale. At first, I was not sure how much I would ride it, but Dan and our girls love to ride together and it would be a fun thing for us to do as a family. Despite my fear, I made myself begin to ride all over our neighborhood, and now I am surprising myself riding miles in the morning and really enjoying the fall weather. This afternoon my family and I all rode down to the park and came back just to ride through the sprinklers of a neighbor. This is a memory that I would not trade for anything and I am glad to be riding again.

So many of us walk through things in life, and we get hurt or have a bad experience and simply walk away from that and never try it again. Maybe we had a relationship that hurt us so internally we vow all relationships are bad. Alternatively, maybe we got burnt by making popcorn on the stove so we swear we will never make it that way again. Or maybe someone ticked us off in the church and we refuse to go back because of it. It’s okay for these experiences to make you more cautious, but we can’t let it stop us. We have to go forward, learn from our past and keep living life. As Dr. Nasir Saddiki just said when we heard him preach, “There is a reason why the rear view mirror in our car is smaller than our windshield. You have to keep looking forward.”

2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

I have really been enjoying my time on my bicycle. Maybe my experience sounds strange for you, but I realize all these years since college that perhaps I’d been avoiding riding again. Sadly, I’ll admit I was missing out. You don’t want to miss out on the things of life. God wants to give you life and life abundantly.

He has awesome plans for your life, so get excited!

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