End-of-the-year is a time to reflect.
For me that means looking at where the FREEDOM TOUR has been and where it’s going. I can’t think about the FREEDOM TOUR without thinking about my friend Wayne. I borrowed these thoughts from our Florida Tour in 2013.
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Wayne was the first person I told about the dream of a cross-country ride. He always encouraged me to go for it. I’m sorry he didn’t live to see how all of this has developed. It would have brought him a lot of joy, and he would’ve been a big part of it. Actually, he IS a big part of it.
I recall asking Wayne how you would train for a big tour since it’s not a one-time event where you’re trying to peak at a certain point. In his typically wise, considered manner he replied, “I think you just train for the first week. Week #1 is your training for week #2…and so on.”
That’s turned out to be incredibly accurate advice, and it’s another way cycle touring is like life. You’re never prepared for the whole thing. You just move forward and trust that each season gets you ready for the next.
Someone once told me high school should prepare a student for life. I laughed. At best, an eighteen-year-old graduate is prepared to be nineteen. In life, as in cycle touring, you train and learn as you go.
If you wait to begin until you’re ready for the whole journey, you’ll likely never begin. At some point you have to take the step you know how to take. Often, it’s only then that God shows you step #2. That’s what trust looks like.
No evidence, but God doesn’t need evidence. In fact, God invites us to step forward in hope, despite the evidence—and then watch the evidence change.
I don’t know how to do FREEDOM TOUR ’16. We have some ideas and we trust that the first three years have prepared us for whatever God has in mind.
Hopefully, we won’t force it into our notion of what’s supposed to happen.
I hope we leave space for God to interrupt. He usually has better ideas.`