A Cycle of Faith: The Bicycle Metaphor

Yesterday morning I showed up at the gym at my not-normal time of 9:25am which just happened to be before a Spin class was about to start.  I waffled back and forth whether to do the class or just stick to weights in the gym.  But since it's been 9 months since I took Tina's class I figured what-the-heck.  I do love spin classes for several reasons:  the enthusiasm of a group, the accountability I feel towards a driven, enthusiastic teacher; but particularly because I always seem to get some type of inspiration from God on the bike.  And yesterday was a sixty-minute class overload.

Our family is in a season of big transition...lots of questions to answer about jobs, where to live, school choices; the list goes on and on.  And its dizzying.  But that's a post for another day when all this has shaken out.  Nonetheless, this season has been a doozy.  A dizzying-doozy. But with it's deep-digging, soul-searching, faith-fanning demands, it's also been nothing short of a miracle.  So though no life-questions were answered yesterday during spin class,  what was answered was a heart-question: the miracle of getting another little glimpse into the heart of God.  And those latter moments are the sorts of moments that make enduring the wait of the former possible.

The parallels of cycling through a life of faith and cycling through a spin class just kept building and building in my mind's eye during the hour,  like a cyclist's ascent up a steep hill.

Firstly, (no shame here, well maybe a little) I couldn't get my seat set correctly.  I turned the knob, pushed and pulled but figured the seat was stuck because it needed grease.  'Do they not routinely maintain these bikes?', I thought to myself (says the girl with the "Routine Service Soon" light on her car for 2 months) Nope, I was wrong.  The kind lady next to me simply hopped off her bike and turned the knob just a slight different way and wha-la the seat height easily adjusted to my measurement, like I was meant to be there.

So I selected "indoor cycle" on my watch and all fifteen of us set off on our stationary bikes.  Immediately, I began getting pictures in my mind.  Like God somehow orchestrated this class.  In my strange mind's eye, my pedaling was like my faith and God was the bike.  God always being available, always class-ready, for us to venture into a faith-exercise with Him.  The interaction designed to grow us not only in body, but mind and spirit as well.  Somehow for this encounter to be successfull, it was also up to me to join in on the class, to get on the bike and move my legs of faith to make anything happen.  It's not like God needs me, but He chooses me.  He's given all of us opportunities to exercise our faith in Him; but we do have to do the work.  'Just pedal', I tell myself.   'Don't just sit there.'  Sitting there: that's not what the combination of the bike and I were meant for.  We were made to move.  Me and God too.  And just as with God, if I want my faith to grow, if I want my life to feel meaningful and satisfied, if I want to see God move in my life because I know "He loves me and has good plans for me" (Jer 29:11),  I have to begin to peddle and exercise my faith.  God does His part, but I have to do mine.

There's a story in the Bible in Mark 5 where a woman who had suffered bleeding for 12 years believed that if she simply touched the coat of Jesus when He was walking through the crowd, she could be healed.  In doing so, Jesus sensed that "power went out of him when she touched Him".  He told her she was healed not because she touched a particular piece of his clothing, but rather her particular faith believed He could do anything.  Jesus says:  'Your faith healed you'.  God is moved to move when we have faith that He can move anything.

So back on my bike, so many things came swarming to mind.  Like, how often we need someone to help us get back on our bikes of faith and get us going again, like the woman who helped adjust my seat.  Or with conviction,  how mid-class, I just wanted to roll my eyes at the girl next to me who clearly must be more fit because she was sweating so much more than me.  Am I lazy God?  Why does it look like she's getting such a better workout - I mean we are in the same class?  What's wrong with me?  I must not be doing something right.  And even then, letting my faith metaphor spill over into my thoughts:  God, does she have more faith than me?  Is that why she's sweating more, because she's pedaling more? She must have more faith I tell myself.

But maybe it's not about what I see on the outside, maybe it's that she's going through something in her own life that requires her to exercise more faith in this season.  She initiates more pedaling of faith, thus more sweating, because maybe the dream she's dreaming for is huge, or her problem needs a bigger miracle...maybe they require more faith.  Paul's writings in 2 Thessalonians 1:3 allude to this very phenomenon:

"We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, 
and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, 
and the love all of you have for one another is increasing."

Pedal sister, Pedal.

We are all different and struggle differently at different moments in time.  Who am I to judge?  So instead of rolling my eyes, our eyes meet 45 minutes into class and we offer a smile of encouragement to one another saying:  'You can do this'.  'So can you'.

I also thought about Tina.  She's not merely the instructor; she's so much more.  It is an honor to have people like her who prepare routines and music for the class ahead of time, who believe in the power of change through exercise, who show us what do and how to press through a difficult class or journey.  Just like Tina, I'm grateful for the faith-encouragers in my life who believe:

God is what will fulfill & change me.

Faith must be exercised.  Me and the bike. God and Me must each do our part.

And just when we think the lesson will never end, or your miracle may never come, our encouragers are there to tell us "Just one more song.  You can do it.  Don't give up.  You are SO close!"

Lastly, there came a point in the routine, where Tina instructed us to stand up and with only the very tips of a couple of fingers touching the handle.  She said, "Use your core.  Don't use your hands to stay balanced on the bike while you peddle.  Use your core.  It's hard to do, but it will strength it."  And I thought how beautifully that illustrates our own faith walks.  God is the very core that will keep us upright and strong.  And when we exercise using it, it only gets stronger and stronger.  When we wobble in faith, it's second nature to grab to the handles of easy fixes, quick solutions,  or attempts at making things happen in our own way and time.

But when we use our core, and endure the life-lesson class,

...just like the women with the blood disorder...

God's power can't help but go out from Him,

     Miracles occur,

          And our Faith cycles on.

Looking for Signs

Years ago around the age of 25 I used to live in Charleston, South Carolina.  Having just finished graduate school I started my first job at the hospital and had this really beautiful 20 minute commute up the I-26 from Mt. Pleasant to North Charleston.  It was typically warm, often sunny and always beautiful. The "South" often is.  Shortly after May 15, 1999, when I met Clark, I began to get signs. Literal ones.  On license plates.  It became a game of sorts.  And then I began to really look for them.

Let me back up...

The week after that May wedding weekend when young, blonde, Georgian, Beamer-driving, recently mad-church-goer met younger, blonde, Texas pick-up driving, Navy dress-white wearing fighter pilot, God began to speak to me via car license tags. Or so I believe He did & still do.  Now to my fellow Brits, you will be like, What on earth is she talking about?  So let me clarify.  In the United States, depending on what State and County you live in, your license tag has a series of letters and numbers, such as (ie:  XVT 875 for say New York, or TXEA 27 for Mississippi) Basically when you drive regularly through your city  you can tell who is a local and who isn't based on these varied tag configurations.  I can't remember what the Charleston ones were at the time but I know that the week after I met Clark, I was driving to work one morning and right in front of me was a LARGE beat-up, white pick up truck and I couldn't help but notice it.  I thought to myself, "wait, I think this is the truck Clark said he drives".  So I talked to myself in my head like I often do and thought, "this is cute God".  It must be a 'sign'.  But the truck wasn't the real sign.  After five or ten minutes trailing behind this truck, I glanced at the tag.  It was no Texas plate but a regular South Carolina one.  But it didn't have the normal series of letters and numbers and spaces for our area.  In fact it didn't have any 'normal' series of letters and numbers for any town I'd seen nearby.  It read "1COR 2 9";  Spaces and all.  If we had cell phones back then I'm certain I would risked life and limb and have snapped a shot of it for what would have been posterity sake.  After a few moments, this new-to-me-Bible-reading-gal began to think that it looked like maybe a passage from the Bible....1 Corinthians something or another.  Giddy with delight I thought, "God is trying to tell me something!!!"  So I raced into work and of course only owning a pager at the time, I did what all people before the 21st Century did, I paged my friend Ann to ask her what 1 Corinthians 2:9 was.  My dear friend who knew her Bible better than me looked it up and shared:  "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what good things God has prepared for those that love Him."  Oh my.  Be still my heart.  Could this be you Lord telling me something about that Texas-pick-up-driving-Navy-Whites-Wearing fellow?  And so I guess it was meant to be.  As 3 years later I married him.  And Yes, God was right all along.  My eyes hadn't seen, my ears hadn't heard, my mind had never conceived all the good ways God would lavish me with His love since those early days of my beginning walk with Him.  And I'm still believing God knows so much more & has so much in store for me that my human, simple little brain can fully understand.  And to this day, this has only fueled a fire in me to continue to search for Him.  His Word does say after all that if we seek Him, we will find Him.  And for about fifteen years (& around two dozen perfectly timed license tag verses later), He's now begun to find other ways to send me His love letters and  I am so grateful.  It's been a new way to search His heart.  And some of that became crystal clear to me this week.

Often we have heavy seasons where it feels like Joy and Sorrow are mixed wildly like in an oil and vinegar cruet, like a dance between Broken and Beauty.  And I have to confess that lately it's been easier to feel the mostly broken bit.  I guess the acidity of the vinegar has seemed to out-proportion the soothing ointment of the oil.  Why?  I don't really know.  Maybe because that's the gravity of this spinning planet Earth we live on.  Like objects, it's easier for our souls to fall down than to rise up.  (And I am a glass half full gal!) The gravity of pain sometimes feels like it outweighs the feather-like weight of Joy.  These few week's birthday parties and long chats with friends in the English April sunshine have mixed feverishly with the stormy news of tragedy and seriously ill-health of friends & family.  My prayers were all over the place.  I have felt really sad.  I've paused a million times  & asked God what to make of it all.  How can I find any beauty in this broken?  How can I enjoy the Joy but also bear the weight of the suffering for my friends or even myself?  Both of these I realize have to be done in communion with one another & with God.

And then something so simple happened last Sunday at church.  A new sort of love letter from God.  A different kind of license tag.  One of the human heart variety.  A letter found during worship at church.  Something unexpected happened.  Something that made me think that this earthly Cruet vessel of mine, can withhold both.  Let me tell you about Jan.  He is our adorable, young German music "exchange" student who's here for the year who leads worship with our lead pastor, Paul.  Jan (pronounced: "Yawn") is his name and he always makes me smile when I see his tall, curly, sandy-brown hair self step up on stage.  England is not his homeland, nor English his first language.  Yet when he worships, it is beautiful not only because of his gorgeous tenor voice,  but also because you see the humbler side of him.  He searches for words from an unfamiliar land for an unfamiliar people all for the sake of leading them to worship His God, all our God.  It's not easy for him. Yet when he speaks to us from the mic he shares his heart, broken English & all and you can see how God's made an imprint on his heart.  And right there on the stage I get to read Jan's love letter from God. And it reminds me again and again that God is everywhere and in every thing.  And uses human beings to be the greatest vehicle for His Love.

Caught up in this simple moment last Sunday, I realized that this is the only way.  The only cure for enduring this mix of beauty with broken when forced to bend to the heaviness of these earthly gravitational pulls.  The cure is to give when it's uncomfortable.  To serve when we're grieving. To bend and break for the sake of others.  Like Jan, to offer ourselves with risk right there outside our comfort zone.  This is not the message the world gives us, which is to look out for #1.   But it is the message Christ gives us, to look after others.  To be His hands and feet even when it hurts.  To help others when we feel like we're not being helped ourselves.  Yet it is the only medicine that will soothe our weary souls.  And from this comes the Joy, and the Oil, and the Beauty.  And for a moment my Soul defies the odds of gravity seemingly pulled up from another type of home, a more permanent, heavenly one and I am lifted so that I might be able to lift another.  This is the cycle.  This is the secret.  This is where my Joy comes from.

"This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Jeremiah 31:33

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13

The Magic Number 7

*tap tap......Is this mic working?  Not sure anyone is still here anymore but for 7 years I took a blogging break.  I'm not actually certain it's called a blogging break when you didn't really blog very much to begin with.  In these past 7 years, a hundred times at least, I thought about writing.  Writing because something struck my fancy and I thought I might put that moment down on paper, or rather out into the scary ether of the internet.  But a hundred times to that I said, "No".  To myself.  Mostly out of fear.  Isn't that what most writers do?  Fear?  Better yet, not really sure I can put myself in the 'writer's' category yet.  But I will not look at the past and say "Why didn't I?"  But for today, I'll take this leap of faith and look ahead right here and say, "What if..."  

This Blog originally started because we moved our small American family of 4 (now 5!) across the pond so my husband could serve the US Navy as an exchange officer over here with the RAF.  We loved it so much that after we left after 2.5 years (2012), we came right back to the same spot 2.5 years later (2014).  Here we are a second time around 3.5 years in!  And we are all better for living in this amazing country and raising our kids as 'half and halfs' ;-) Half British/Half American.

But as for blogging, I think my heart grew weary from the upkeep or either I simply ran out of things to say.  Because frankly, I tired even myself of  'a day in the life of Cindy Childers' and family' posts (there are MUCH more interesting people out there than us) and craved more about writing how I see God moving, living, breathing, active, uniquely, discreetly, abundantly - in my day to day.  Which He can do in every single human's life.  I think He's beautiful and I love what He shows me, so that's the blog I've always felt called to write about:  God in the everything.  A car ride to school, a sunset, a plant, a river, a conversation, a business meeting, a church service, an accident, a storm, a friend, a plane ride, simply everything.  

And ironically I've feared that concept of writing simply because even though time and time again I find God's handwriting all over the place, I've simply talked myself out of it.  I've reasoned: "Well God did do it today - He showed Himself to me in such a beautiful way; But then I'd question:  'But God, what if You don't do it tomorrow? I won't consistently have anything to write about!  How lame will I be? So lame!'  I laugh at this simply because my heart knows good and well that God could never, EVER run out of ways to reveal Himself.  It's simply always a matter of us to just keep looking.  But today is a new day.  And each day we are given a new chance.  So today I'm here. Trying to be obedient to the one thing I've loved all along, My God and what He's called me to do.  And seeing Him in every day life thrills me to no end.  It's wild and wacky and beautiful and until I record it (and gosh...I hope I have the courage to hit 'publish'), I will never know what may come of it.

So without further ado, I thought I'd share a simple short story from our snowy English countryside weekend.  It doesn't often snow in England...actually hardly ever, at least in the south & certainly  not this much.  About as often as I write posts...every 7 years.  The last big snowfall I experienced here was in 2011 I believe.  

(Ironically my very last post includes my husband's infamous Land Rover in the snow.)

So this weekend, it snowed so much (Maybe 8-10 inches?) that school was cancelled 1/2 day Thursday and Friday making for a lovely 4 day weekend.  (Unheard of)  Friday morning when my eldest son woke up and realized there was only wholemeal bread to make himself french toast with, he jumped at the chance to be the adventurer he is and after piling on layers of warm clothes he trekked into the village for some "white bread" from the Co-Op.  Liam is never one to accept boredom easily.  But he's trustworthy (for the most part) so off he went.   After about 45 minutes to an hour, (the grocery store is only a half a mile down the road) he hadn't returned.  The roads were icy slick and he's been known to bruise/break/thump a few bits and pieces of himself, so I started to worry.  So I went outside because I couldn't see the end of our driveway from my kitchen window.  And this is all I saw.  Nothing.  Meaning:  No child of mine.  And so I started to worry.  'Where is he?'


In the back of my mind I knew he was probably fine but it's always the 'what ifs' that get us.  And sometimes those 'what ifs' do play out, but most of the time they don't. But either way, God has us in our 'either ways'.  Yet in this moment, I sensed God.  I didn't sense any great revelation about Liam's welfare, to be honest, but I sensed God's heart about all those children He's loved and seen lost.  And like a flash, the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) came to my mind as I stood in the cold.  I looked down our cloudy, whitish grey drive Friday morning eager to see my 90lb, tall, gazelle-like pre-teen and sensed an even deeper yearning beyond my own: "God is so desperate to catch a glimpse of His beloved sons and daughters to return home to Him."  He doesn't just sit in the warm house thinking 'maybe one day' they'll show up.  Rather like the Father in the Prodigal son story, I think He stands outside in whatever it takes: in the cold, in the dark, with a lamp, with a gracious and generous heart anxious to greet us with a hug and just keeps looking and looking hoping for a peek of something that looks like this:

And then my own faith gained sight and I got a glimpse of this vision.  All 90lbs of him, and I could exhale.  And though he was only out for a brisk walk for bread.  It stirred my heart to think that if I was as happy to see this young lad walking up my drive as I was, how much more Joyous is God when He sees the heart of one of His children turning to come home to Him?

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' Matthew 4:4