It’s Monday, July 26.

A day that seemed so far in the future the first time I hopped on my bike and attempted riding it down Fair Street in downtown Franklin.

A day I thought would never come, and at the same time, once the trip started, a day that I knew would come too soon.

Most of the team has headed out – some by air, some with friends or cars or our support van…

One by one we hug the departing teammate, our circle of remaining cyclists shrinking smaller and smaller.

I’m about to get into my own rental car – I’ll be in Myrtle Beach an extra day and flying to Canada, of all places, tomorrow – thrown back into the real world and real life and real work faster than one can say “Eh?” – and then meeting back up with my husband in Minneapolis on Thursday so we can begin our drive back to Nashville.

Last night we sat in a circle and attempted to process this insanely lovely trip in an hour.

As impossible as it sounds, we finished early; nobody had many words to say.

We’re left in a state of wonder about what just happened…a paradoxical time warp of two months that have flown by in slow motion.

It seems surreal, but tan lines and broken hearts as we say farewell to each other prove to us this indeed was a very real, very powerful story that has taken hold of each of us in unique ways.

For now, I’ll leave you with a few pictures from the trip…I’m sure as time and space continue to hold me as I walk through the upcoming weeks in reflection, more layers of this adventure will be exposed.

Packing up to Leave Nashville

At the Pacific Ocean

Beauty Was Not Absent at Any Point

Dustin & I at the VLA

Darth Vader was on Our Team

My Longest Ride - 106 miles into Forrest City, AR

The Girls Wore Tutus for the Last 20 Miles of the Trip!

Team Photo at the Atlantic Ocean

Girl Tan Lines :)

Abandon

I only brought two books with me on the Ride:Well Tour: Mary Oliver’s Dream Work (my favorite collection of hers) and Walking on Water by Madeline L’Engle. I’m a fairly uncommitted reader, so I thought that would be enough.

L’Engle refers to several books in Walking on Water, two of which I found myself desperately needing. One being her own A Circle of Quiet, and also Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It just so happened that A Circle of Quiet is in our own library of books, and with two taps on my phone, I had Rilke’s on the way to meet me in Nashville when the tour stopped there.

I finished Rilke’s the two nights we were home, and plucked A Circle of Quiet off the top shelf in our office to put in my messenger bag. Also, since my church (St. Bartholomew’s) was hosting us, from their bookstore, I picked up a copy of Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail – a book exploring the movement of protestants into the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition, since my husband and I currently find ourselves in such a transition.

Only eleven pages into A Circle of Quiet, I came across these words I found quite worthy of sharing. I’d love your thoughts on them:

The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in history in such people as Tiberius, Eva Peròn, Hitler.

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I was timid about putting forth most of these thoughts, but this kind of timidity is itself a form of pride. The moment that humility becomes self-conscious, it becomes hubris. One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time. Therefore, the act of creating – painting a picture, singing a song, writing a story – is a humble act? This was a new thought to me. Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

I tweeted this specific line a few days ago: “One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time,” and surprisingly received some negative feedback. I personally thought it was a brilliant, but others didn’t share the sentiment.

Oswald Chambers hinted on something similar once:

Yet you will never be able to measure fully what God will do through you if you have a right-standing relationship with Jesus Christ…it is actually by His mercy that He does not let you know it.”

Y tu? What do you think of humility, self-awareness, and self-consciousness and how they play together?

When we notice how we are being humble, or sacrificing for one thing or another, I think that could be a form of pride. It’s in the unaware, subconscious moments we don’t notice when it’s truly God working through us, and we’re allowing him to by getting out of the way.

Thank you guys so much for your prayers, support and pledges for the century ride! I am happy to report that with the support of my team and you guys we rode 106 miles from Little Rock to Forrest City, AR!

AND…we had OVER $1000 pledged!!!!!!!!!!

I must have been high on adrenaline because I didn’t hurt much at all (until I made it to the church) but everything is good and the heart rate behaved for the most part (Thanks, Dr. Moreland in Dallas for the medicine adjustment suggestions!)

Anyway, here is the picture of my bike computer before and after. If you pledged (or even if you didn’t), you can make your donation by clicking here.

Again — I am just so humbled and grateful for your support and willingness to pray for and financially support our amazing friends in Africa. Knowing that there are 19 people who now have access to clean water (and are now safe from being victimized on their way to find clean water) is just incredible.

THANK YOU!

Who would you say are the most vulnerable people in the world?

Children? Women?

Guess who typically holds the responsibility for walking miles daily to fetch water when there is no source available?

Children and women.

When our cycling team shares about how clean water helps communities become more educated, we talk about how children can go to school instead of having to spend their days walking to and from a water source. Women are also free to earn income or take care of their homes.

But a few nights ago, I was looking at my schedule for our upcoming rides and was struck with a thought that terrified me to the core.

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I’ve sparsely mentioned on my blog that I was sexually abused by a pastor when I was in high school. As I went over our route, I realized something.

On this trip, I would be within miles from where the person who abused me is living.

Knowing this instantly caused me anxiety. What if I saw him at a gas station or a grocery store? How would I react? Flashbacks from years past rushed back. I felt like a vulnerable sixteen year old again.

It’s interesting how Blood:Water Mission and this particular part of my past have woven their stories together. I didn’t expect that discovering my proximity to my abuser would have such an impact on the way I thought about clean water, women, and children.

I mean, if I was a vulnerable, lower-middle class sixteen year old girl in America…what happens to vulnerable children without the protection I had?

So, I researched.

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It didn’t take long to discover how women and children seeking a simple place to use the restroom are often targets of sexual crime. I found this right away on the UN’s website:

1.3 billion (NOTE: BILLION!!!) women and girls in developing countries are doing without access to private, safe and sanitary toilets. In some cultural settings where basic sanitation is lacking, women and girls have to rise before dawn, making their way in the darkness to fields, railroad tracks and roadsides to defecate in the open, knowing they may risk rape or other violence in the process.

That doesn’t include the risks women and children who go alone to find clean water source may face, either. The World Health Organization says that many women are forced to have sex in order to receive clean water. Certain men will claim territory over areas of water and use that “power” over the women and children who need that water in order to survive.

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Even though I haven’t been able to ride every single mile on this trip, it was my goal to get a century (100 miles) ride in and Thursday, July 8, is my last chance since it’s the last century ride on the trip.

At first, attempting it was more of a personal accomplishment. I’ve ridden 80 miles before — why not finally ride the milestone of a century? But after all of these random bits and pieces from my own story and the tragic statistics from millions of others, I decided to change the focus of that ride.

I’m riding this century for the women and children who have lost had taken away from them their innocence, their hope, their sense of who they are for the unjust reason of not having clean water or a private place to use the restroom.

And I’m going to make an ask of you.

Would you help sponsor me for this ride? We raised over $5200 on my 30th birthday that went directly to Blood:Water mission and I’m going to ask you to donate again.

Can you pledge to donate $1 for every mile I ride on Thursday? Or even $0.25 for every mile? Even $.01 for every mile will give an African clean water for an entire year — every penny counts. Every penny goes to Blood:Water Mission.

The route has us going 104 miles from Little Rock, AR to Forrest City, AR, and I’ll take a before and after picture of my cycling computer and post it as soon as I have internet again so you can see how many miles I finished.

The lack of access to clean water is such a solvable problem, penny by penny. And with clean water, maybe we can help prevent innocent women and children from being taken advantage of by allowing them to stay in safe places.

Because nobody — nobody — should have to have such a beautiful part of their life stolen from them just so they can survive and provide for their families.

If you can pledge, please leave a comment and I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as I can. Or, if you’d like to simply make a donation, you can click here.

Before heading out on this cycling trip, one thing I was curious about was how “God would show up” and I was really excited to “find Him” in different ways.

Anyway, I thought I had it figured out, this “God showing up” thing. In my fantasy I was leaning head-down into the wind, pathways of sweat cutting across my face and rolling off into the road behind me. I heard the vibration of my bike moving across hot asphalt as blades of grass and insects buzzed next to my feet. My chest moved in and out as my lungs expanded and emptied with each breath. I felt the movement of God in me. I felt alive.

We’re now on our fourth week of this trip and my God-fantasy is just that. A fantasy. There have been no magic burning bushes or epiphanies had on the open roads. In fact, it’s maybe been the opposite.

And as expected, the unexpected has happened.

Physically, the heat and climbing escalated my almost-fixed-but-evidently-not-quite heart problem. That knocks me out from riding every mile on certain days with big climbs or 100 degree plus weather.

Didn’t see that coming.

On top of that, the day before two really great rides in Texas, a component of my bike broke to an extent I couldn’t effectively ride. Chris and I had planned to do our first century rides together into Anson, TX (which is close to where I went to high school) but because I couldn’t get my bike fixed before that day, I ended up driving the van.

In keeping a healthy perspective, my unplanned time in the van isn’t really a big deal. Before my heart surgery, simply walking to the van would have been tough. So riding 30 miles, 50 miles, 80 miles…any miles, really…is beyond anything I could have hoped for a year ago.

But my perspective isn’t always healthy.

I’ve been fighting with my “ideal” self – the athlete I was before my heart problems. I know my muscles are strong and can handle these long miles. Except for the literal pain in the butt from sitting on a six-inch seat for seven hours, nothing really hurts.

If only my heart worked right, this wouldn’t be such a struggle for me.

If only…

The unexpected has thrown my spiritual fantasy out the door as well. And once again, it has to do with my heart.

What I expected is something emotional. Cathartic. Exciting. Clear. Maybe even miraculous in an obvious way. I’m supposed to be writing another book and planning my future as an author and speaker. I wait each day, hoping for a revelation on what I’m supposed to do when I get back in August and each night go to bed as empty handed as I woke up.

If only…

What I am realizing is the extent I let my expectations control me. My heart – both physically and spiritually – had formed expectations for this trip. Expectations that aren’t being met. I’ve spent so much of my spiritual life coasting from a mountain top to a valley and back up again, so I only expect to see God at the top or at the bottom on a roller coaster.

What happens when there is no roller coaster?

What happens when the land of my spirit is flat?

How do I find Him?

And when I don’t “feel” Him…where do I turn?

Quite honestly, I find myself turning the other way.

(Evidently I am not gifted with patience.)

“What? You’re not here? Okay. Fine. I’m gonna try running over there to find you.”

I’m left breathless and exhausted at the end.

My heart…It’s not perfect.

It beats too fast sometimes.

It gets anxious.

It doesn’t like to wait.

It likes to experience the highs and lows, but never the middle.

The middle is too quiet. Too tame.

And as such, too threatening to my comfort.

In the same way I can’t control how my physical heart functions, I can’t control how God shows Himself, or how I see him.

What happens when God isn’t a feeling? When He isn’t a high or an adrenaline rush or a moment of clarity when I expect Him to be?

God simply is, and I need to simply be.

I need to realize that in that holy moment of simply being, it’s not about my expectations.

It’s about His.

Resting.

Existing.

Living.

Being.

Right here. Right now.

In this moment.

With this heart beat.

And this one.

And that’s all He wants (and expects) of me.

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