On when I wobble, but do not fall

Those who know me, who are as close as I let people get to me, to what has been a fragile soap bubble of self, know that I have said repeatedly this year, "The past three years have been so hard.  I don't know how much more I can take."  The thing is, when I wrote all of those things in January, I had no idea that it was going to get much worse before it got better.  I did not know that I would come too close to losing a child myself.  I did not know that my marriage would falter.  I did not know that the search for a job would still be going on to the point of desperation.  I did not remember that it is always darkest before the dawn.  So I let the dark frighten me.  I closed more and more of myself off with each new hurt, with each new harsh and painful event until I was alone and afraid.

Then I became angry.  I have made a point to live my life without a spirit of fear, or so I thought.  I am not afraid to try new things, to try and fail and try again.  I decided to take my life back.  Once again I was going to live with purpose, and flair, and gratitude.  But it is not always easy because sometimes the fear comes back so hard and fast that I feel like I am having an asthma attack.  I am knocked breathless and shaking and I hate it.  It is then that I wobble, that I feel that sense of complete vulnerability just like the moment when I hit a bump on my bike and I don't know if I will fall.

But those moments pass.  I take a deep breath and remember all that I've been through in the last three years.  I think about what could have been and what was instead.  I think about how God delivered me, not in a blazing fire by night, or discernible cloud by day, but in little increments.  And I know why they were little.  Because little by little I let go of the fear I did not know was fear.  I let go of my need to know, to control, to look like I had it together when I did not.  I had to let go of the fear that had been with me so long I did not recognize it for what it was.

I wanted to do something different to celebrate this decision so I decided to conquer the one fear I had left from childhood.  I had long ago learned to light a gas stove (no explosions!), refused to be afraid of spiders, and went camping with a gaggle of girls and moms without my husband to protect me in the dark. I decided to learn how to ride a bike.  I thought I had a good chance at this since my repeated exposure to roller coasters since I married into this clan.  I could now ride those without feeling like I was going to die.  Surely a fall from a bike would not be as bad as the fear of my cart somehow leaving the tracks. Perhaps a little gravel or blood, but I'll be honest, I take that chance every time I walk through the yard because I am a total klutz I am not that coordinated.  My childhood experiences with this had been faltering.  The fear that came over me when I took that second foot off the ground to push down on the pedal and thrust myself forward, suspended on a thin framework of metal with no seat belt or safety mechanisms at all had always defeated me in the past.

So Barry and I took the bikes that had been given to us by a generous friend who was moving, that had leaned in our outbuilding gathering dust, tires slowly deflating, and went.  Bike helmets and water bottles in tow we headed to a bike trail near the river and in the summer of drought, of doubt, of fear, I learned how to ride a bike.  It was not a pretty sight.  I wobbled and jerked and glanced fearfully at the gravel path, but I did not fall.  Time after time, in the hot dusty days of a too dry summer, we went back until I was not afraid, until I could ride faster and longer, until I was not watching gravel, but thinking about how amazingly free it felt to ride.  This, this is how I want my life to be.