For months we had not ridden our bikes. With planning for our second wedding in Canada in June, and not wishing to risk getting injured, we had decided to play it safe and avoid the roads for a little while. But a little while turned to months, and it was a spontaneous decision to do our first mini triathlon together that spurred us to hit the roads again.
It was liberating for you to feel the wind in your face again, and liberating for me to see you so happy to be back on the saddle.
It had taken me a while to confess to you- that though we had planned to take a break from riding our road-bikes because of our wedding, I was also relieved and secretly avoiding cycling again, after a spate of near-accidents and stressful cycling incidents. You are at ease always on the bike, but a little stray dog wandering an inch too close to my wheel, or the hint of a little girl playing and nearly running into my way can cause a real rush of blood to my cardiovascular system. I become tense, often for the rest of the ride.
With a triathlon just round the corner, I finally plucked up the courage to ride long distance again with you. They were fairly smooth rides, save for a little brown poodle on an overly long leash that languidly wandered to sniff at my wheel while I cycled past that nearly gave me a heart attack.
“Hey, want to go farther?”
We were 20 kilometres away from home, and still, you had a hankering to go further, to explore the deeper end of the beach. I was reluctant to- after all, wasn’t that end of the beach under construction? The last few times we rode there, weren’t the paths all dug up and smothered with sticky red clay, weren’t the trees all uprooted, and weren’t there ugly yellow tractors all around?
But a reminder to self to be more supportive and encouraging as a wife instead of a wet blanket all the time egged me to agree more enthusiastically. “Sure,” I said, “Anything you want.”
As we rode through the deep end of the beach, lush, towering trees and brand new street lamps on a newly paved, smooth road greeted us. The sides were awash with emerald grass kissing a blue sea, and the scenery was amazing. The old place had been clothed anew. I had forgotten, the terrible state of construction that the place had been in was months ago, and this was the result of months of hard work. I couldn’t believe that though so much time had passed, in my mind, the abandoned, run-down state of the place was still plastered in my head, stuck in time.
At once, a thought came to mind- sometimes, don’t we see our inner states as such too? Even though time has passed and done its work in our hearts, do we still see ourselves as barren and empty and “under-construction”? At times, do we fail to acknowledge the progress and work God has done in our hearts to bring us where we are today, and do we sometimes forget to encourage ourselves that indeed, we have come a long way?
That beautiful scene in the deep end of the beach was a visual reminder of the work God has done in my life. Even though my natural mind had assumed its old pre-conceptions of my old self, I was then reminded of how far God had brought me, and the huge overhaul and renovation work He had done in my life all these months of our marriage.
As I cycled, I also noticed that unlike before, when I would suffer mental blocks in starting my bike because of the fear of falling, I now started and stopped my bike far more smoothly. It was as if in those months of not riding, God had somehow worked on those fears and eliminated them from memory. In the same way, without my knowing, I felt that in the past many months where we had simply sat at His feet praying and seeking and journalling, God had furnished anew my inner-self, and done up the interior décor without my conscious knowing, too.
A few nights ago, after meeting old family friends from my childhood for dinner, Cliff and I were talking about our pasts and old baggage. Cliff asked me whether I still compared myself to K, a childhood friend whom I used to envy and feel very much inferior to as a young child in school and those awkward years of adolescence. After a short pause, I actually said, “No, actually. I don’t want her life. In fact… I don’t want to exchange my life for anyone else’s at the moment. Not for K’s, or C’s… I don’t even envy J’s life anymore. I’m so thankful and happy with what I have now, I wouldn’t want to exchange it with anyone else.”
As those words left my mouth, I was stunned. We both were, actually. All through my life, I had suffered a self-esteem complex. Just a few years or even months ago, I would still subconsciously compare myself with others, envying the life they had, and be troubled by dark bouts of self-pity, melancholy, and frustration. For the first time in my life, if even for a brief moment, I felt like I had reached some sort of milestone, arrived in a way, at some sort of significant train-stop in my life.
“Wow,” my husband said, “You’ve really grown a lot.”
“This is a breakthrough,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
As I remembered the lush towering trees flanking the smooth, new roads at place which used to be under construction, I was filled with thankfulness. Sometimes, without us knowing, God can do a real work in our lives. We may not feel it or know it, and at times, grow discouraged by our seeming lack of progress in whatever stage of our lives, but know this- as you continue faithfully trusting God to do his renovation work in your heart, unswervingly believing in hope and persistently reading His word and holding onto God’s promises for your life, a real re-construction is happening, even when you don’t feel it.
All these months and years, God had washed out the bad seeds in my garden, plucked out many weeds and put on new paint in my inner home. Until I saw that scene in the beach, I did not realize this.
So whatever point you are at in your life, be encouraged. Perhaps you feel the same way you did yesterday, and grow weary in your journey in life with Him. Know this- trust faithfully, hope unswervingly, and hold on to the good and true promises He has for your life. When you cast off your old and negative mindsets about how you see yourself, still clothed in old and ragged garments, you might be surprised to see yourself clothed anew, washed clean and presented afresh, to a God who loves you, through and through, truly.
Photo taken by Sandra Bosscher, in Leslie Log House, Mississauga, Canada
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,
as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf:
Be reconciled to God.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Cor 5: 17-21