Get on the Bike

Several years ago I rode my bike everyday during the spring and summer when I got home from work. Sometimes I rode 10 miles, sometimes I rode 20 miles, but I always rode. I rode a few times with friends, a few times with a local bicycle club that would ride to the next town over, have pizza and beer, then ride back home. But most of the time, I rode alone. Just me, the open road, and my Trek.

Since I have always had terrible joints, bicycle riding seemed like the thing for me to try. I was also trying really hard to take better care of my health and, again, bicycle riding seemed to check that box. So I ditched the Huffy I had from my college days, and saved every extra penny I had for a new bike at the local bike shop. That summer would lead me to the healthiest weight I had been in years, it would lead me down many county roads across Iowa, it would lead me to my first pair of spandex shorts ever (YIKES!), and it would lead me to riding a leg of RAGBRAI with my eldest brother, Stacy. 

It would be a great story if it stopped there, but it didn’t. I didn’t keep riding my bike after RAGBRAI. Over the years I would ride in spurts–riding for a handful of days or even weeks, only to put the bike back in the garage. When we moved here from Ames, I rode the bike trail here in town a couple of times, and rode my bike to work a few other times, but it was certainly nothing to write home about.  

Then, in the summer of 2022, I tore the horn of my meniscus in my right knee. A process of scans and specialist visits revealed not only this, but also pretty advanced osteoarthritis. I underwent injections, months of physical therapy, and had even scheduled a pretty radical surgery to prolong the life of my knee with a sports medicine surgeon at the University of Iowa which I would, inevitably, cancel. There was a lot in my life that was up in the air during that time, but one thing became crystal clear rather quickly: My bicycling days were over…or so I thought.

The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t ride a bike anymore, the problem was that I couldn’t get started on a bike anymore. The force required to start out from a stop sign or on an incline (the kind of inclines not in short supply here in town) put a painful pressure on my knee that made riding a bike less than pleasurable for me. So I filed bicycle riding under “Things I can no longer do,” and went about my life–a little less happy. A little less healthy. A little more trapped in a body that felt like it didn’t let me choose another path. 

As I processed this resignation with trusted others, I admitted that I still had dreams of riding a bike again. I told them of all the days I thought about “some day,” out in the future, when I figured out how to ride once more. You know, that “later, magical day” when I had a different body, with a different knee, that allowed me to ride my way into better health. I wasn’t sure if that day would actually come, but I was living those magical future days in my head nonetheless.

One day, one of these trusted others asked me, “So, you want to be a person who rides a bike?”. I looked at this person blankly, as if to say in my best Chandler Bing sarcasm, “Could I BE any clearer?” I responded, “Yeah, but that’s not an option right now.” Then they replied, “Yeah, but…what if you just became a person who rides a bike?”. They went on to say that I could spend my energy figuring out how to keep living in my head and in some made-up, future reality, or I could spend my energy actually being a person who rides a bike.

I thought that was completely ridiculous and OVERLY simple, but it turned out to be genius. I remembered someone at the church sharing about an electric bike they and their spouse had purchased and had liked, so I started researching electric bikes. I learned that electric bikes aren’t motorized scooters, they provide varying degrees of electric assistance when needed–like when starting out at a stop sign or on an incline. I spoke to my doctor and my spouse, and everyone was on board with me saving up for an E-bike of my own–just like I had saved up for that Trek almost two decades before. But purchasing an e-bike didn’t make me a person who rides a bike…I had to get on.

To be a person who rides a bike, I had to put those grandiose, made up, future realities away, and just ride one time. Then, the next day, when I still wanted to be a person who rides a bike, I had to make the choice to get out of my head and get onto the bike another time. And another. And another. Until I have finally realized that to be a person who rides a bike means making the choice, in each moment that I can, to just get on the bike and ride.

You know, Jesus called his disciples to follow him not by painting some big, amazing, future reality with a really fancy vision statement, but by saying two words: “Follow me.” And then, over and over again, presenting those who said they wanted to be people who followed Jesus with opportunities to actually follow. Through caring for the poor they encountered. Through tending to the outcasts that they met along the way. Through feeding those who were hungry in their midst. Every encounter, an opportunity to not just be a person who wants to follow, but to be a person who actually follows. 

Whether you are a person who wants to follow Jesus or a person who wants to ride a bike, workout more, gossip less, laugh more–whatever–the decision is not something that you make one day. Neither is it something that will only happen on some future day when all the stars align and everything is finally as it should be. Being a person who follows Jesus or rides a bike happens only when we actually follow. When we actually ride. When we just do the thing when the opportunity to do it presents itself. It is a choice we make in moments–over and over again–instead of a one and done sort of thing. 

So this week, friends, I encourage you to join me. Follow Jesus. Get on the bike. Go to the gym. Keep the juicy gossip to yourself. Let the belly laughs roll. Don’t think about it or dream about it or talk about how your life will be so different one day when you do the thing, do it now. Then, get up the next day and do it all over again. It’s as simple as that…it’s as hard as that.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa 

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