It's now 11 days since we stopped biking.... some of us are still blogging.....and reading each other's blogs.....life should have taken on a semblance of normality by now but for me it's not there yet. But then, what do we consider normal? For those of you who went back to school or work, normal came very quickly - those of us who are retired or didn't have a job to go back to, normal will take some time to become reality. Connecting with family and friends will take priority to spending time on the bike. This too is important - they were such a big part of my prayer support.
This past Sunday was probably the first time that most of us were able to worship with our home church family - for me that was the case and it was wonderful to be back with them. It was exciting to relate back to them the highlights of the tour. Their prayer and financial support was overwhelming for both Hilena and myself. Thank you so much members of Bethel CRC!
Pastor Jim's message was based on texts from 1 Corinthians 12 where it talks about how we are one body, with many parts in our church family.....I related this to the bike tour where we could say we were one group with many different cyclists - each of us brought something unique and special to the group - the young people mixed so well with us older ones. I was so impressed by the sincerity of the younger ones when I heard them talking to strangers about the reason for the bike tour. These are our future leaders in the church and we can be very proud of them. I miss the people who I had contact with for 5 weeks - none of us were alone in this endeavour - we were part of a very caring group of people - we looked out for each other, we encouraged each other, we cared for each other, we shared joys and struggles with each other, we cried together, we laughed together. Pictures and memories are what we now have of each other until we meet again and some of us will meet each other somewhere, sometime. Today I met Eritia at her workplace - she is missing people too - she was going to bike home after work and bike back to work tomorrow - she still loves biking.
Last week my 5 year old grandson, Nicholas, asked me to go biking with him - this was just two days after getting home from doing nothing else than biking for five weeks and I had to say to him very guiltily that I didn't have time that day - it felt awful to have to say this to him. The next day I did go biking with him - we cycled along a trail close to home - there was a corn field right beside the trail - nostalgia took over - thinking back to those corn fields in Iowa and Nebraska......only this time I did not have the need/urge to find the 3rd row on the left for my potty break - so used to seeing that sign at Walter's SAG - ladies go 3 rows to the left, men go 2 rows to the right.... I have put 40 km on my bike since coming home. My odometre reads 5600 km now - double what I had on when I started in Denver....I plan to put on lots more yet before the snow flies.
I also think back to all those little cards we handed out along the way.....will curiousity make people look us up on the web site to find out more about why we were cycling or will they be discarded? We can only pray that people want to know more about the cause and help to do something about poverty. We were confronted by poverty in some of the areas we cycled through and each of us knows of poverty in the areas we live in - it won't go away by itself - we all need to do something to improve the lives of those living with/in poverty. None of us can leave the tour saying we were not effected by what we were cycling for. Each of us has been challenged to make a difference somewhere/somehow. This too is part of reality. Joe and I have signed up with DRS to spend 3 weeks in the Lake Charles area of Lousiana in early November - this will give us a chance to live in community again with others - a little like what we did this summer. We hope to make a difference in someone's life there DV. Who knows, we may meet up with some of you other cyclists there.
Reality tells me right now that it's bed time....
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