I Don't Know How to Bike Across the Country

People keep responding to my tour with amazement and wonder. They find it so shocking and phenomenal that I rode across the entire country, that I did what I did. But I did nothing. It wasn’t me. I was simply a willing instrument in the Master’s hand. People keep asking how I did it. I tell them I don’t know. I didn’t. He did. And now each time that I encounter a new challenge, an unknown, I recognize the fact that I am nothing on my own. It is only by His grace, provision, and guidance that I can accomplish anything; from my first steps to my first college level class.

So many times we use our lack of knowledge as an excuse for our lack of action. Without fail, at the beginning of each semester, I feel stressed and overwhelmed by my classes. I hate not knowing what I am doing. And so often not knowing what I am doing becomes an inability to do it. ‘I don’t know’ has an uncanny ability to become ‘I can’t’. Talking with my teammates about a month and a half after our tour was completed, I was struck by something Samantha said. So many people hear about our tour and say that they could never do something like that. Samantha said:

“It’s hard to describe to people, when they say “I can’t do it,” what they’re missing. Everything they would miss from doing something that they think is impossible. All the things you learn…It’s amazing…how something like this can teach you so much just about yourself and about others. About things you thought you never could do. And I want to give that experience to people. Whenever they say, I can’t do this, whether it’s biking across the country or what, I just want to tell them, there’s so much more than the average American life. You can do this.”

So every time I start a new class where I know none of the answers leaves me feeling unsettled and anxious I have to remind myself. The point of a class is not to know all the answers. The point of a class is to learn all of the answers. That’s the entire purpose. I am there to learn. If I don’t get an A in the class because I didn’t know the answers but I come away with more knowledge than I had before, it was a success.

Dustin, one of my team leaders, said on our tour: “When we fear failure and we don’t even try, we have already failed.” You do not fail by trying and not succeeding. You fail by not trying. As much as we like to succeed and be competent, we learn so much more in our failures and incompetence. With each new experience I still find myself afraid and frustrated that I don’t know how to do it. And so, each time, I have to stop, to recognize myself as the instrument I am, to admit that I cannot do it myself, and to allow God to take m in His hand and to use me as He will and knows is best. I may not know how to do a lot of things, but I don’t know how to bike across the country either. And I serve a God who delights in teaching His children and in witnessing that ‘aha’ moments in their lives.