Countdown to Triathlon – 188 Days, 26.85 weeks to Race Day (See Installment 57 of "The Journey", 220 mile bike ride, below)

Happy Valentine's Day!  Here's an old fashioned card to wish you many hugs and kisses from all your loved ones today.



 The Journey - Installment Fifty-Seven

        As I neared the house of the lady who gave me directions and said she would pray for me, I was begging God to help me.  My knees hurt so much that I knew I couldn’t make it home without assistance.  I was calling to Him for help.  Then I sensed in my spirit or my heart, however one would explain it,  that God was speaking to me and the words that I understood were, “I gave you that lady.”  I said out loud, “Lord, I can’t go and ask her for plastic bags and ice so that I can ice my knees.  I don’t even know her.”  There was dead silence.  The Lord had spoken and evidently was not going to say another word.  I rode past her house about a quarter mile and realized that it was either go back and ask the lady for bags of ice or ride home in excruciating pain.  I turned around and went back to her house.  I went to the front door and knocked.  She answered the door and I told her what I needed.  I said that if she could get a couple of bags of ice, I’d sit on the lawn and ice my knees because I really wanted and needed to finish this ride by myself and didn’t want to have to call my husband to come pick me up.  I remember that she stood on the other side of the screen door, hesitated,  then said, “Oh, come on in.  You look like I can trust you.” 

            I sat in her kitchen for about thirty minutes icing my knees.  In the course of the conversation we had, she asked me where I went to church.  She told me that she went to a church in Escalon, a nearby community and I asked her if she knew a customer of mine and she did.  We couldn’t believe it.  God gave me a person to help me in both directions, going and coming back, first, for directions and a promise of prayer for me and then help in the way of bags of ice coming back when I felt I couldn’t continue because of the pain.  And He made sure we even had a mutual acquaintance. It was almost as if God was giving her peace of mind about me, a total stranger, being in her home.  She asked me how I got started on this journey and I told her the entire story.  I told her about the dead birds and that I still see them every time I start whining and complaining.

         Knee icing completed, I stood up just and we headed for the front door.  She asked me if I had seen any dead birds that day, and I told that I hadn’t. (That was a good sign because it meant I hadn’t been complaining and whining.) Just at that instant, a bird flew into her large picture window, right in front of us and smacked the glass really hard.  I don’t know if the bird died, but it sure got our attention.  We looked at each other and I shrugged my shoulders and said, “At least this time I wasn’t complaining but it was as if God were trying to show her I was telling the truth about the birds. After  leaving her house and heading home for the rest of the journey, I passed several dead snakes in the road.  I didn’t stop to see if they were Rattlesnakes or not but they scared me in case they were playing "possum" and might leap up and bite me anyway.  I guess I have seen too many scary movies.  I was able to finish the ride in  5-1/2 hours total time. The amount of time it took to finish the sixty miles was not great but at least I finished.