Bicycles.
When I was in sixth grade, my parents decided to buy me a bicycle.
There was only one problem, and it was a small one.
I had no idea how to ride a bicycle.
So instead of converting the bicycle into a tricycle by adding wheels to the side—which is how most kids edge slowly and surely into the promised land of self-balancing wonder—my father took a decidedly different tactic. He strapped a helmet onto me, sat me in the bicycle, looked me in the eyes and solemnly vowed to push me while I pedaled the bicycle.
“I promise.”
“You promise?” I asked. (I was already dubious of the probability of this vow being carried out. I never played a sport or broken a bone and had no intention of breaking my spotless record.)
“Yes, I promise,” he said.
“You promise?” I repeated.
“Yes, I promise,” he repeated.
So he began pushing me around the cul-de-sac, and after about five minutes I could feel the momentum from my father’s legs keeping the bicycle upright. I relaxed and started talking to my father from the bicycle about what had happened at school that day, and asked important questions, like why did they name the bike company Huffy? A minute of complete silence passed by, and I had that sick feeling in my stomach, the kind you get when you know something terrible is about to happen, and I turned around to find that I had been talking to empty air for the past few minutes. I turned back forward, but not in time to avoid the concrete street light.
I lay there for a minute, simultaneously impressed at the ability of myself to ride the bicycle unaided and in shock at the sensation of crashing headfirst into a concrete street light. Across the street, my father was waving nonchalantly at me, as if nothing had happened, and slowly, I picked up my bicycle and limped unnecessarily the fifty feet back to my house.
One of the biggest lessons my father taught me was that the anxiety of pain is often more debilitating than the actual pain itself. In the days following my encounter with the street light, the shock of running my bike into a street light quickly wore off to the idea that my world could be expanded. I would ride my bike up Alamo to Yosemite, where the McDonalds overlooked the freeway that wove through our city. When I got older, I would drive my parents’ minivan up the very same street and watched both ends of the city burn during wildfire season, with ash flurrying down like artificial snow and coating our lungs. Years later, when I was in college, I would take my scooter and glide down the unlit streets of Santa Cruz, riding down all three miles without even tapping the brakes, and I would marvel at the gravity of it all—how much things could change over the years.
When I look back on my life and the many ‘what if’ moments, I find that my story fails to advance when I give in to the fear of pain. And there are distinct moments when I can feel God inviting me deeper into the story, into the narrative. There are these moments where God hands me the helmet, props up the bicycle, and asks whether I’m willing to overcome my fear, trust Him, and ride.