Bicycle
Sunday,
January 18, 2015
5:45 PM
I
remember the first time I got angry. I mean really, really angry. As in
red-faced, fist-in-the-air,
I-hate-you-angry.
Something of mine had been taken away. My rights had been violated. I was not
happy.
It
was my very first "big girl" bike, the bike on which I had learned to
ride without training
wheels, the first
mode of transportation that carried me away from our home and property into the
world beyond, a few dozen yards anyway. It was mine. And now I watched,
horrified, as my bicycle was crushed under the back tires of a big yellow
school bus.
I
wasn't expecting the bike when it was given to me for Christmas a few years
before. The
Tricycle I rode as a
toddler was assembled before it was presented to me on a Christmas I don't
remember, as was the pink bike with the plastic training wheels and the Minnie
Mouse doll perched on the handle bars. When I opened the gift from my grandparents
that Christmas morning, however, I was greeted by the pieces of what would
become my first twenty-inch bicycle. I was dumbfounded. What would I do with
pieces of a bike I didn’t know how to ride? Fortunately, I didn’t have to try
and put it together myself. If I had, I never would have learned to ride. For
the first few years of riding that sky-blue twenty-inch, I didn’t learn, but
relied instead on training wheels. I don't mean the plastic kind of training
wheels that were on my Minnie Mouse bike. These were more heavy-duty. Now that
I think about it, I am convinced that no other kid in the world ever had
training wheels quite like mine. I'm still not sure where my dad got the idea
of taking the front wheels off of a lawn
mower and attaching them to my bike, but that's what he did. They held me up as
I pedaled up and down our gravel driveway and occasionally around the parking
lot of Davy Crockett State Park.
I
remember the day I came home from school determined that I was going to ride my
bike
without those
training wheels. It was something I just had to do. I still smile when I think
of that surreal moment when I looked back and realized that my dad was no
longer holding on the back of the seat as I peddled, but was standing a few
feet behind me with mom, both of them clapping and cheering.
That
bike went through a lot with me. We took our share of tumbles, but we kept
going. The act
of riding a bike is
a great adventure for a child. In some ways, it's more difficult than driving a
car. There you are, sitting on a seat barely the size of or smaller than your
own seat, balancing on two wheels, peddling fast enough to keep moving so you
don't crash and slow enough to keep from losing control and crashing. It wasn’t
easy for me, but I did it. I loved that bike.
My
bicycling days changed that fateful morning. I didn’t ride the bus to school.
My brother and I
went to a private
school back then. My aunt and cousin lived across the driveway at the time, and
the bus driver would pick up my cousin and then turn around at the end of our
driveway before heading back up the road. For some reason, I had left my bike in
that turn-around-spot the night before. I'm sure the bus driver had no way of
seeing my little bicycle as she backed up. I can only imagine the response
inside the bus as they heard the crunch. All I could think of, though, was that
she had no right to run over that bike, my bike. My world had been turned
upside down. I was mad.
Fortunately,
my anger dissipated when my parents took me to Wal-Mart and bought me a new
bike. I picked out a
hot-pink and purple twenty-inch with streamers on the handle bars. My mom
protested that it was time for a bigger bike. She was right. In a short time, I
got tire of my new "cool" bike and was ready for a larger one. Fortunately,
we were given some money by the school system's insurance with which we bought
a twenty-four Inch. I must have really gone through a growth spurt, because I
quickly grew out of that bike and into a dark purple twenty-six inch ten-speed.
It's
been a long time since I've ridden a bike. I no longer have the time or the
interest. Our
bikes are all flat-tired
and rusting behind the shed, their days of adventure and usefulness over. But I've never forgotten that first
real bike, or the first time I got really, really mad.
I
didn't want to let go of that bike. I rebelled at it being snatched from me,
being crushed before
my eyes. It reminds
me of other times in my life, when things I had come to rely upon were ripped
from me; circumstances, comfort zones, people. It's all too easy to get mad at
God, like I got mad at that poor bus driver. Now that I'm older, I can see that
it was time for a change. I didn’t need that bike anymore. I'm learning that
when God takes something away, often, we’re in need of something new, ready to
brave a new trail in our walk with Him.
Walking
with God and riding a bike have something in common. They both require trust.
The
journey isn't always
easy. There are bumps in the trial and scraped knees. But the wind in our ears
as we rush past and the view of what lies ahead make the journey worth it.
There's
a saying that goes, "When God closes a door, He opens a window." I
would like to add
on to that by saying
that God doesn’t ask us to surrender something without having something better
for us. His plan for us is greater than we can imagine. He wants to take us to
new heights. That can't happen if we don’t let go of the twenty-inch and get
ready for the twenty-four inch, or the four cylinder, or whatever comes next.
The
Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 3:14: "I press toward the goal for the
prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus." Paul knew that
he lived for a purpose greater than himself, that God had greater things for
him to do than He could imagine. Not only did he have to leave Saul behind, and
become Paul, but he went through numerous hardships, all for the sake of that
higher calling. It wasn’t easy, the calling rarely is, but it was worth it.
What
is God asking me to surrender today? What greater thing does He have in store
for you if
you give up whatever
you're holding on to so dearly? It's time to leave the old bike behind and
press on.
