Devotion 338 - bike ride

My head whipped around quick. There was a mixture of shock and disbelief. And there was that knowing that a mother knows when she feels she has somehow let down or disappointed her child.  It slips from the throat to the stomach like liquid fire and burns.

I shot a glance at my husband. 

“I tried,” he mouthed to me.  Where was I?

My daughter was whispering quiet to her youngest brother.  She was asking in most humble of ways.  She does this when she is handed a chore that she doesn’t like and sweet talks for assistance.  But this was no chore.

She was asking her trusted friend and brother to teach her how to ride a bike.  Her brother, confident in his skills and seeing this as a cool, “I am the older kid” assignment, quickly agreed. I stood astonished. 

My daughter, my 11-year old daughter, does not know how to ride a bike?  What kind of mom forgets that ? I scrolled quickly through ten Christmas’s and birthdays and tried to figure out how we missed this chapter.  This was not a quick, “Well she never asked to learn issue.”

Kids don’t really want to know how to brush their teeth or make their beds, or say thank you or pray.  Yet somehow I got around to teaching that. 

But bicycling, yes, I am the mother that forgot that lesson.

Of all my children, Lily spends the most time outside.  She loves the outdoors.  She has a fairy garden and a secret little play house in which she has spent untold hours.  She brings a journal and records life as she knows it and as she imagines it.  She has never asked to ride anywhere on two wheels.

Strange this. 

Beau took to the lessons in earnest and let Lily borrow his bike.  Beau and Lily’s daddy spent hour after hour coaching, encouraging and steadying. 

They started on a Monday and in three short days my determined little girl and her mentor were ready for the church bike trip.  Amazing what motivation will do.

We hoped and prayed she would make it.

I watched as she packed her lunch ready for the day of two–wheeled adventure and I thought long and hard about the lessons I have missed. 

Surely there was more than just this. 

What Beloved would we do without grace?

What would Lily have done without her brother and her father and what would we do without a Father that teaches even when we feel we are too old to learn?

I have days when I feel fearless.  I get on this great big bicycle called life and I sail.  Arms flung in the air, hair blowing wild and squeezing the last drop of juice out of the day.  I love days like that.  Oh, I remember to say thank you for the Maker of those days because truly those are few and far between.

The hard truth is there are not many days I don’t think about my hair and there are even fewer that I feel I can ride, or glide or walk or talk even a few feet without Him.  You see anytime we have an easy day, there is a little distance we create between us and the Father.

More often than not, I get on with life perhaps a wee tired at the start of the race and the image of the finish line seems cloudy.  I blame ageing eyes, but it is really an immature spirit.  It’s the thought that I am supposed to finish which fails me.  Rather, I am supposed to journey. 

I am supposed to hit the road, bumpy or smooth, rainy or hedged with sunshine and find ways to serve Him.  I dare not to look for the straight path but the one that has hidden and dark places, ones where I might need Him more.  Ones where I will see His mercy pour down and I raise my hands not in independence but in submission and need. Oh Beloved, I hunt and thirst for easy, but truly this life is hard.  Remember the words,

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have PEACE. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

I want to stop in the middle there and have a cold taste of PEACE, but we get Peace and trouble as the unique package of life.  In the midst of bumpy roads, tear filled moments and frightening days;  conversations where we feel inadequate and tasks that taunt us with our lack of skill, His voice rises above the noise of the world with a promise, “It’s not you, it’s ME, let me, lean on me, I am holding you up.” 

This world is a ride; a ride of reliance to the Lord. He has his hands on our back, He steadies us and He points us in the direction we should go.  Easy?………. No.

Worth it……………… oh my yes.

I want to stay in the race.  I want to learn the lessons He has for me.  Fall off, yes, at least once a day.  He dusts me off.  He touches my hurt heart and He puts me back on.  We begin again and He forgets I am a stubborn student.

 I love Him for that.

I will instruct you in the way you should go!  I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.  Psalm 32:8