A Summer of Grit and Grace

The days are growing shorter. The temperature outside is cooling. The leaves are hinting that they are ready to trade out for a more colorful wardrobe. Summer, it seems, is coming to an end. I normally welcome the descent of winter. Snow is one of my favorite things in the world and I love playing in it. I love the world being blanketed in white and giving everything a clean slate. But this year feels different.

A few nights ago I watched the movie “Miracle” about the miraculous triumph of the United States hockey team over the Soviets in the 1980 winter Olympic games held in Lake Placid. I love that movie, and not just because it’s about hockey, but because it truly inspires me each time I watch it. I’m sure the film doesn’t even begin to convey how hard the team had to work in order to overtake what was at the time considered the greatest hockey team on earth. Herb Brooks, the renowned coach for the U.S., pushed the players harder and further than anyone thought was humane. He even went so far as to tell his team that they didn’t have the talent necessary to win on talent alone. They had to train harder and simply want the win more than the soviets in order to conquer them. And that’s exactly what they did. They believed in a dream everyone told them was impossible....and in the end, their dream became a reality. 

By the time I reach the end of the movie each time I watch it, I too feel like I’m on top of the world and am capable of achieving all of my dreams. I guess that’s the beauty of sports films based on true stories like that and why I’ve always been drawn to them. 

Four summer ago, I had the privilege of experiencing a similar moment of achievement when I rode my bicycle 65 miles to Lincoln, MT. It was a feat I never would’ve dreamt possible, especially when a few years before that I couldn’t even jog one block down my street. The next summer I did the ride again via a slightly different route. The third summer I rode to Lincoln and spent the night and then rode home the next day for a total of 137 miles. Last summer I rode 70 miles in one day to Butte and two months after that I rode 101 miles in a single day to Great Falls. I pushed my body to its limit. And by the end of each ride, I could feel that something inside me had shifted and left me a better and stronger person. 

After each ride I always had people ask me why I wanted to do it, or more specifically, what had possessed me. I always tried to explain, but there came a point where I realized that if they had to ask, they would never understand. I did my rides for a lot of reasons, and after each one I had a bunch more reasons to continue with them the next summer. The best way I can explain is to say that they were a spiritual retreat. They were 6, 7, or 10 consecutive hours with just my thoughts, my heart, and God at my back. Somewhere along all those treacherous miles, I made peace……with life, with myself, and with God.

I fully intended on doing another long ride this summer. I was welcoming that high I felt each year after my ride. It was a feeling I not only love but physically and emotionally need. But God had different plans for me. I had one gloriously happy day in May when my boyfriend, Andy, of 8 years proposed to me. Then 8 days later, he was diagnosed with MS. My world got shattered for a bit…..and even 3 months later I find that I am still incredibly bitter about things and the way they always seem to play out in my life. Even when the pieces of my life seem to fall into place, they are handed to me with fractures already in them. Dealing with his diagnosis and all that came with it forced me to become a wife before I was even a bride. And in the weeks that followed, two of my cousins also became engaged and I witnessed the joyous pictures and words pop up on Facebook. I wanted to be happy for them. But all I found inside was anger and bitterness. For that, I am truly ashamed. 

I am a firm believer that God delivers the hardest battles to his toughest soldiers, but sometimes I wish He’d made me weaker and would give me one easy win. This summer has drained me of what some days feels like all my time, strength, love, and energy. I’ve given everything I have to Andy and to making sure he is taken care of. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  But I feel exhausted and angry about it all. The worst part for me though is that it caused me to give up my annual bike ride. I just didn’t have the time to put in the training necessary and I lost my drive to do it. Now I feel hints of fall in the air and it makes me sad because I didn’t get that spiritual boost from a ride that I’ve grown accustomed to carrying me through the winter. I so needed it.

One of my cousins and her boyfriend embarked on a 3 month bicycle trip along the Continental Divide from Canada all the way to Mexico earlier this summer. There isn’t a day that’s passed this summer where I haven’t thought about them and wished I was turning pedal strokes all day long right beside them. I can’t even imagine how they will feel at the end of that journey, but whatever feeling it is, I know it will only surpass the feeling I’ve experienced. It’s the kind of feeling, like I said, that you can’t really explain but it’s the kind of thing that carries you through the next year and all that life throws at you along the way.

This year I didn’t get to ride. I didn’t get that feeling. But I like to believe that when summer rolls in next year that I will be renewed for a bunch of new reasons. Not long after Andy’s diagnosis, I met with my past dance instructor of 13 years because her husband has lived with MS for many years. I don’t remember a lot about that meeting because most of what she told me frightened me. The one thing she said though that has never left my mind pertained to her, not her husband. She laughed saying she has spent most of her life saying that she can handle whatever God throws at her, and sometimes she realizes that He is clearly seeking to challenge that belief. When she told me that, I remember thinking that I do the same thing. 

I don’t run from challenges---I face them head on. When people tell me I can’t do something, I go right out and do it just to prove them wrong. My bike rides were a way of challenging myself, physically and mentally. But I never doubted that I would succeed. I don’t think God doubted me either. And I do believe that’s why He decided to put a greater challenge before me this summer. He wanted to give me something I wasn’t sure I could handle. He knew all along I could handle it, but He needed me to realize that too. And He prepared me well by helping me come to the decision to be baptized into the Catholic Church earlier this spring. Without His spirit within me in a new and profound way, this challenge would have been much harder. 

I still feel angry about things and I won’t ever try to hide that fact. But I know now that at the very least I am at peace with God about things. And in the final analysis, I believe that peace is the only one that really matters.