Learning to Ride a Bike

Derek and I have been working with Lucy (our 5 year old) the past few months on learning to ride a bike. The biggest lesson I've been trying to teach her (and the hardest hurdle for her to get over) is to try to keep her eyes straight ahead instead of looking down at the ground. As long as she is looking ahead, her wheel points in that direction. But as soon as she looks down at the ground, she starts to wobble and shake and gets terrified that she is going to fall off.

Today marks the 2-yr anniversary of us departing for Uganda. 

(seriously...was this really us two years ago?) 

I'm realizing that one of the most important lessons God has been teaching us over the past two years is the "bike lesson." When our eyes are fixed on the horizon, where heaven sets triumphantly over Calvary and removes the disdain of the cross, our hearts are at peace and we pedal on with assurance. "Yes. We can do this. We can press on and learn to ride this thing." It's foreign and wobbly and we don't know what we're doing, but we're learning...and we'll get there. 

How often we look to the ground, though, and think, "What in the world are we doing? Ahh! We're about to fall off- we're going to fail. We're going to crash! Brace yourself!"...and our wheels start wobbling. (Have you ever heard the saying, "...the wheels are coming off the bus" ? Yeah, it's a common phrase we jokingly use regularly in Bundibugyo :)

 So, here we are- 2 years in to this thing called 

"life on the mission field".

(...and looking somehow similarly to the exhaustion we felt 2 yrs ago!)

I wish I could say the skill of mastering this new life has come as quickly as learning how to ride a bike. Unfortunately, I'm slowly realizing that maybe it's not ever meant to be "mastered". It's never going to be easy because managing our life in Bundibugyo (or wherever we are) is not supposed to be our gazing point.

Our gazing point is Jesus. 

Someone asked me this week if we see ourselves as "career missionaries". At one point in time (2 yrs ago), I would have whole-heartedly answered that question in the affirmative. Two years in, though, seeing numerous friends leave the field due to unexpected circumstances or ones out of their control, I've learned that nothing in life is certain. Who knows what the future holds (but the Lord, of course...) More than that, we have a higher calling than that of just being "career missionaries". We are called to be "career Christ-followers". If being a "missionary" (or a "mom" or a "wife" or a "nurse" for that matter) is where I gain my identity in life, then I'm going to feel like a failure if we come home after a certain amount of time or don't accomplish what we set out to see happen. However, if my mission in life, is to be a "career Christ-follower", it doesn't matter what doors open or close, or what twists and turns and re-directions happen along the way because my bike is always heading in the direction of Calvary...and one day I'm going to get there! When Jesus is our horizon point, we can ride with confidence, assurance, and excitement knowing that nothing can derail our bike or send us off course. It's then that life becomes the joyous adventure that it is meant to be. And then we can sit back and enjoy the process of learning to ride...

Here's to 2 years!

(and many more...)

PS- we don't plan on leaving the mission field any time soon, and are presently heading to the base of Mt. Kenya to a town called Chogoria before re-routing our bikes back to Bundibugyo. Pray with us that our hands would be open to the Lord and our hearts surrendered to Him.