I’ve gone mountain-biking once—in my home state of North Dakota, believe it or not. The Maah Daah Hey Trail. Look it up.
(I don’t want to deceive anyone, because I didn’t make it anywhere near finishing the 96 miles of undeveloped trail through the Badlands. What I did was more equivalent to playing in the kiddie pool while the big kids jump off the diving board.)
Regardless, the thing that stuck out to me most wasn’t the ups and downs of the hills—it was the ride back into town across the flat land more typical of North Dakota. It was windy. And there wasn’t a tree or building in sight to block it. It was freakin’ hard, and I specifically remember thanking God for each pedal stroke—thanking Him for the muscle tone that got me back to town.
That’s kind of how I feel now—only emotionally so.
It all started last summer, with the mountain being a two-month trip to Africa. I came back with many cultural assumptions of life turned completely on their head. And the last year of my...
04.14.08
Life: “Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?”
Life: Few welcome death, and those who do mostly see it as an escape or respite from their present suffering.
Life: It’s been three years since moving to the Northwest. A long distance relationship of two years brought me to the evergreen state with its mountains on one side, the coastline on the other, and granola and coffee shops in between.
Life: We feel like impostors. We feel that we don’t really deserve to be taken seriously; that if the people we’re about to address knew the truth of the matter we’d be finished.
