Stuck in a Gear
Boy do I like pedaling. There isn’t a day that I don’t spin a pedal around on a bike, whether it’s running our dog Kobe up our dirt road or an actual workout where I’m training for an event. There’s quite a few bikes in our garage since I have passed my love of all things bikes (and shoes!) to our boys. Jan jumps in with all the pedaling too.
There are a few bikes in our stable that have just one-gear but most have a wide range of gears. My favorite bike has 22 gears. The one that I borrowed for the Leadville 100 mountain bike race had 11, but they covered a huge range that would go from barely moving to barreling down a mountain. Gears are good; they can make mountain climbs a bit more tolerable and tailwinds that much more fun. When you ride in all conditions and places the broader the variety of gears the better.
There’s a catch though. You have to be able to change gears. Switch gears. Gears change your effort, speed, and cadence. Gears are good but only when you can access them.
And that’s the rub I’ve faced lately. You see, I have a pretty funky looking bike which I love, but it has gears that are activated by little motors fed by electricity. A battery powers the whole mess and if the battery has no juice I’m not changing gears. Whatever gear the bike is in when the battery dies is the gear I’m rolling with until it’s recharged. I’ve been pretty far away from home when the old battery dies and I’ve had to make my one gear work for whatever piece of road confronted me.
The disappointing part to me is that for whatever reason, my battery holds charge a little bit on the “extremely disappointing” side. I can ride as long as I need it to if it’s freshly charged but I can’t expect it to be charged enough for more than one ride. So if it’s not plugged in and receiving juice overnight I can’t switch gears for an early morning spin. Can I still go? Sure. But it’s going to be one gear out of the twenty-two and that’s not real fun or even helpful for the roads around my house.
I’ve changed cables, junction boxes, and even the battery. I’ve plugged my bike into a computer and ran diagnostic tests. I can’t find a mechanical problem anywhere. In order to run through the gears and get the most out of my fancy bike I need to have it plugged in before I start my day. That’s the solution! My battery only stores energy; it doesn’t create it and so the routine is to ride, plug the battery in, and charge it up for the next ride. If I want to use all the gears I need all of the juice in the battery.
Does this sound familiar to our lives? We live in a big, complicated world. We have more “gears” to use than any time in history. We can be as busy as we want to be. We can be super connected, super motivated, and super scheduled. Our world has a lot going on and we can be participants; but we have to have our batteries charged!
My encouragement to get charged up is to read. Not just anything, but a readable-to-you translation of the Bible. I say this as someone that enjoys writing but struggles to hold focus reading for anything longer than 30 seconds! It never ceases to amaze me at how something I’ve read in the morning applies to my day. It’s not wasted time at all.
Jan and I have a pretty good routine with this. We’re up at 5am and we each have our chairs in the office room in our house. She reads and writes notes. I read and then daze off and have to go back and reread what I thought I read. She has one translation and I read a different one. After a few cups of coffee and a lot of silence we start talking about what we read and what the day will bring. It’s sitting, chatting, but most importantly it’s recharging. It’s filling up our batteries so we can change gears for whatever the day has in store.
Years ago I had a video crew come to our house at 4am to get some shots for my businesses website. We had a script and a message we wanted to promote and the team thought some shots of me doing a morning routine would be good to help tell the story. The bad part of this was that they rolled up to my door at 4am and I forgot to tell Jan that a group of guys with cameras would be in our kitchen while she was in her PJ’s. She was a sport, especially after I apologized repeatedly, and the cameras started to roll while I poured coffee, laced up my shoes, put the leash on Kobe, and headed out the door. There was also a very minor, split-second clip that showed me leafing through my Bible, because that is part of the morning routine.
I have always remembered that because that part of my morning was out there for all to see. It’s really held me accountable. It can’t be just for marketing purposes, it has to be meaningful and authentic. If I’m going to say this is who I am then I better back it up.
To wrap all of this up I would encourage you to take the plunge and get plugged in. Get recharged. We need all the gears we have been given to make it through a day full of emotions, relationships, and action. Some quality time reading the Word is the foundation for how we can approach all of this in a very personal way. I’ve always felt that a few minutes spent reading returns more than I could ever do in my own strength or understanding. Without it is like pedaling in one gear through all of life’s ups and downs; doable but it sure feels like there could be a better way!
