Some of you may know that I am spending two weeks on the road in support of a highly skilled bike racer competing in the Race Across America. Heather is a mother and physician who has also managed to build her personal fitness to a level where she can realistically plan to bike 250 miles per day, day after day, to achieve her goal of crossing America in under 12 days. We crew members devote our time to round-the-clock nutritional, medical, and emotional care.
This is a remarkable journey, in all ways. Today, we passed through Monument Valley and began the climb into Durango, Colorado. There has been astounding beauty and dire dinginess; there has been cowbell-clanging elation and tears of frustration and fatigue. On the first full day of riding, the generator running the air conditioner overheated and shut down, interrupting the precious 3-hour sleep time allotted to Heather each day with the searing heat of the Arizona desert. As her sleep attendant, I felt this setback as a personal failure. Our own sleep is in short supply as well. This is hard work.
Every day, I am given multiple opportunities to be irritated with others, to rue circumstances and regret errors that have cost us time, to wonder why I am not comfortably enjoying summer evenings from the deck of our home. However, this means I am also provided with multiple opportunities to choose how I respond to things that are not as I’d wish them to be -- not how they’d be if I got to be boss of everyone and everything!
An article by Georgia Noble* calls aging “enlightenment in slow motion.” I think of this phrase often as I strive to embody my best self at this developmental stage of my life. I’m still learning to focus on what is, in this moment – not what should be, or what I wish was, but what is actually present in the gift of this moment. My late, lingering journey of enlightenment leads me back again and again to the same goals: letting go, accepting God’s sustaining presence, and resting in gratitude.
What is God’s gift to you, today, in this moment? How can you take a pause to usher in gratitude for the life you have been given? In Pastor Laura’s newsletter message this week, she describes her response to the wonderful life of our church and the beauty of a June evening: “I had to stand in the parking lot for a minute to breathe it all in. Sometimes the goodness of it all nearly overwhelms a person.”
Pause. Breathe. Thank God for the gifts of this good world.
* I was introduced to this article at the Soul of Aging retreat at Camp Mimanagish! Read about that fantastic experience at the Camp Mimanagish website. It takes place this summer August 27 – 31.
