Once again, I am on the mend from having gone down on my road bike while riding the Olentangy Trail.  The pavement was wet and I took a corner a little too fast, and the result is a banged up knee and some road rash on my chin and my knee.   It has been five years since my last bicycle crash, and I am amazed how similar the healing process is: the sorest you are going to be is about two days later.  I am at that benchmark today and it is true to form.  And I have learned something else:  At 54 the body doesn't bounce back quite like it did at 28.  

After every crash I always swear that I am not going to have another one...ever.  Certainly, with my last one being 5 years ago, they have become more infrequent because I have become more careful.  In my 20's and 30's I was a little more "devil may care" on my rides and paid the price a little more frequently.   But even though I am much more careful and promise myself that I won't do that anymore, I know that it is not entirely possible to insure that because it is the nature of the sport.  The possibility of crashing is always in the back of my mind, but because I love what I am doing I just don't let it bother me.   In fact, the possibility of going down two days ago wasn't even a thought.  But it had been two days before that.  I rode with a fastcat, 25 year old rider who had just gone down on a wet bridge on the trail (I saw him picking himself up off the ground and stopped to make sure he was okay).   He fared pretty well, and then told me that this had been his first crash.  I told him how old I was and that I'd had quite a few over the years, but I was being really careful in my "old age" so as to not go down again.  And that jinxed it, of course.  Two days later, it's history.

Living our lives is a lot like being a cyclist: you know the possibilities in the back of your mind but you just don't let that stop you from doing what you love to do.  In the living of our lives, we really do not know what is around the next bend.  At times it simply does not matter how careful, or even pious we are, things we never imagine possible can happen.  I have never considered faith in God to be my immunity shot to prevent all bad things from happening in my life.  Rather, faith is that which allows me to pick my bike up off the pavement, keep going if I can, and if I can't, find the help and patience I need to heal from whatever came my way.

This is, of course, that which Christ came to witness to most of all in the short three years of his ministry.  It is important to remember that in every encounter in which Jesus changed someone's life, the story pointed to what it was that person was going to do from that moment forward.

As soon as the stiffness in my knee subsides, I will promise myself that I will never crash again and get back on my bike.  Maybe I won't ever crash again, but I won't lay down any bets.  And I won't be thinking about that anyway, simply because I love what I do so much that while injured I am counting the days until I can get back out there. 

God does not want us living lives that are paralyzed by the unknowns of life.  Rather, God calls upon us to move forward simply because we love being a disciple and proclaiming the Good News of God's Kingdom so much that what might happen never overwhelms who we are and what we are doing right now in the name of Christ.

By the way, just a practical piece of advice:  This was the first crash I ever had where it happened so quickly I had no time to think about how I was going to fall.  Consequently, I hit my chin, and the front of my bike helmet tells me that without it being on I would have hit my forehead on the pavement.   The moral of that story is: Wear a helmet.

Peace, Jeff