Can You Get Back on the Bike?

In which I admit I have no idea what I’m doing.

Have you ever stopped riding a bike for several years? I’m guessing you have at some time. Not a lot of Moms get to ride their bikes as frequently as their children do. So we hang up the bicycle in the garage and try to forget the gentle hum of the wheels and the feeling of wind through our hair.

Have you ever gotten on a bike after several years of not riding? Your balance is slightly off, you wobble down the street, and you wonder why the seat feels about seven feet higher off the ground than before. You wonder if you’ll fall and shatter on the road. You pray no cars come down the street while you struggle to control the contraption in the middle of God and everybody. Your child looks on in bemusement or outright ridicules your lack of coordination.

Yes, you can forget how to ride a bike. But it does come back to you after an hour or two, and soon you’re cruising just like back in the good ole’ days.

Life is like riding a bike. Sometimes you can forget how to live.

We get out of practice, out of habit with our routines and responsibilities. We hang up our dreams, our goals, our todo lists in the cellars of our hectic hurrying so we see — and think of — them no more.

We push our best lives aside for days, weeks, even months on end.

This is sometimes good, even necessary.

We might need to focus on today’s crisis, or this week’s blessing, or even this season’s challenge. God may interrupt our plan to insert His own new direction.

The kicker is this: can we get back on the bike?

When it’s time to come back to life, when the day comes for the rubber to meet the road, can we balance it all and make our way, wobbly at first, down the road?

Will our family mock our feeble attempts? Likely. Will our friends smirk? If we laugh with them, sure. Will we look back on these crazy days fondly? Most certainly.

We just can’t fear the wobble. We have to stop looking down at the pavement in fear and look up at the horizon. We have to take a deep breath and try to relax. We have to celebrate our accomplishment if we don’t hit anything or anybody.

This is where I am right now.

After two weeks of serious anxiety about the crazy fall schedule, I have to face our first week of school and first full week of evening activities. And boy, am I scared.

Summer was so much fun. It was easy to concentrate on our newly grown family as we celebrated the addition of twin six-year-olds to the family. Hot days and long sunshine makes me happy. Laying by the pool is my favorite.

We had a couple of months to adjust to the new norm of family-of-eight. We go through 50% more food each week. More shoes, more shorts, more hugs.

No schedules, no commitments, no responsibilities other than get-through-the-day-with-a-smile. The days flew by way too quickly.

It’s time to get back on the bike.

I have written our new schedule in several places around the house because, I kid you not, I cannot for the life of me remember what to do next and what time. It’s just too much. And every evening is different. Gah.

I started off the first day of homeschool only half prepared. I didn’t remember what I had forgotten until each student said, “Mom, where’s this book?” or “Do you have this supply?” or even “Do you know what I am doing in this subject?” A decade and a half of homeschooling, and I completely forgot how to do it! *slap forehead*

I forgot how to play the violin. It is embarrassing. And I have concerts coming up. Cover your ears.

And I can’t write. Seriously, right now, I’m typing everything over and over because not only can I not spell (nothing new there), but I can’t find the letters on the keyboard and can’t put words together like things to say good.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,” my son’s Sunday School verse says. I don’t know what I’m doing, Lord!

Maybe I’ll just do one thing.

Like pushing one pedal at a time. Just one step, one kindness, one hug at a time. One task (not multiple!), one meal, one deep breath.

Like looking up at the horizon. Unto the Lord. Trusting Him to be glorified in my feeble wobbles in the middle of a crazy life.

Whatever I do.

Even if I don’t know what I’m doing.

Wondering if this is all worth it? Feeling like your real life is just too hard, to insignificant, too discouraging? Fighting hurt and rejection? I’m right there with ya’. And I will share my heart with you right here in Rocking Ordinary. Read it now and tell me what you think . . . and how I can pray for you, too.