This bike riding thing opens some amazing doors.
Last week I was invited to speak to the staff of the Denver Rescue Mission at a very cool venue called THE CROSSING. I was honored and humbled to be in the midst of these special folks who do such incredible work.
Most people know DRM for their work with homelessness. Their downtown facility feeds and shelters thousands of individuals every year, but that’s only the beginning. DRM provides community connections and vocational outreach. Their New Life programs offer highly successful addition recovery programs to hundreds of men and women at The Crossing and Harvest Farm. They provide transitional housing for families working to break the grip of chronic homelessness.
I began by asking a question. “What can a bald guy in a wheelchair say to people who deal mostly with homelessness ad addiction?” It’s the same question I hear occasionally when I tell someone about my work at Harvest Farm.
The answer, of course, is that we’re not defined by an addiction…or an injury. We connect with one another through our stories.
I talked about my injury and the ten foot strip of red tape that nearly defeated me.
About five weeks after my injury the therapists loaded me into my first wheelchair and defined my first challenge. I was supposed to push my chair ten feet without stopping…on a smooth, level, tile floor. To mark the distance they placed a strip of red tape in the hospital hallway. (If you look closely at the photos you’ll see a piece of tape on the stage as a visual aid.)
I couldn’t do it! More accurately, I refused to try, because I’d lost hope. I was convinced my life was over.
I told more of the story, how God continued to place people in my life who refused to allow me to give up on myself. I talked about a decade of anger and depression and horrible choices.
And I talked about a day in 1999 when some friends coerced me into trying this crazy contraption called a handcycle. And the story of a 1500-mile ride along the Mississippi River. And FRONT RANGE FREEDOM TOUR.
Then I rolled to the strip of red tape and asked, “Who knows someone who might be having a ten-foot-strip-of-tape moment? Who knows someone who’s scared, frustrated, maybe even tempted to give up?” In that crowd nearly every hand went up.
“What does that person need?
“She needs hope. And of course that hope comes from Jesus, but Jesus asked us to be His hands and feet. So she needs us to surround her, even when it’s hard, even if it takes a long time, even if she tries to push us away.
“And she needs courage because those ten feet are scary. We we need to walk with her, to give her some of our courage–that’s called ENCOURAGE.”
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These people dedicate themselves to serving so many folks at their ten-foot-strip-of-tape moments, to loving them and giving them hope and courage.
I hoped that through my story might connect us and offer a simple illustration of the work they do on a daily basis. Mostly, though, I wanted to inspire and thank them for making a huge difference in the lives of many of the most marginalized in society.
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You and I might ask ourselves a similar question.
Who in our own circle might be having a ten-foot-strip-of-tape moment?