A Bike Ride with God

By Gregory S

Dead from my addiction, my life withered to nothing more than rotting fruit clinging to a vine. The devil himself was ready to pluck me for a feast of his liking. Yet by the right hand of God, I escaped the claws of my demons and found myself in search of something more. Inch by inch, I pushed through ten thousand miles and seasons that tested me from one extreme to another. Come join me on my journey as I learn of the Lord's amazing glory and grace to understand that you are never alone. God always has and always will be with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662480591

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A Bike Ride with God

Gregory S

Copyright © 2022 Gregory S

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8057-7 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8059-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Boys Will Be Boys

Chapter 2: Room for One

Chapter 3: Life Was Good

Chapter 4: Room Service

Chapter 4.2: I Had No Amen

Chapter 4.3: Searching

Chapter 4.4: Into the Night

Chapter 5.1: Temptations

Chapter 5.2: Tasting Hell

Chapter 6: A Key

Chapter 7: Thinking Outside the Box

Chapter 8: Learning to Walk

Chapter 9: Gift of Wheels

Chapter 10: I'm Listening

Chapter 11: Day by Day

Chapter 12: Garbage Trucks

Chapter 13: The White Bicycle

Chapter 14: The Roommate

Chapter 15: The Golden Calf

Chapter 16: The Cleansing

Chapter 17: My Story

Chapter 1:

Boys Will Be Boys

It wasn't just green; it was metallic green. The banana seat sparkled with the two colors, the other being a yellow stripe. Adorned with chrome-polished handlebars and highlighted with streamers of those bright colors. A popular style of bike if you were a kid in the 1970s. Oh…how it was a magnificent sight!

Within a year, it didn't look quite so shiny. There was padded foam popping from tears in the seat and rust spreading like a fungus from all the scrapes and chips that adorned the bike, mimicking scars on a warrior's armor. Reflectors were missing or just clinging on for some last possible hope of safety. Sure, it was a nice bike in its prime, but as an active kind, I had outgrown its potential. I was wanting something more, something faster. I felt the need to kick up some dirt, jump higher and farther on our homemade ramps. All the innocence of childhood that keeps mothers in short supply of Band-Aids.

Soon came a birthday, and along came the Huffy. Now there was a bike suitable for a young boy with all the intent to be the very next daredevil superstar: dull black finish with some racing stripes and a couple of numbers to add to the flair, even a mock gas plastic tank for that motocross enthusiast's imagination. It was a popular bike of the time and was sure to kick up some dust and set some records.

We had our club containing just a bunch of kids and plenty of imagination. Anything was possible to make a fort out of. Crawfish were easy to catch out of remaining pools of water after a summer rain. But the bullfrogs and tadpoles didn't pinch our fingers quite as much. Kickball was the preferred sport of the neighborhood, and our only job was swatting mosquitoes into the evening hours as we played into the dark. If we weren't on our bikes, we weren't far from the pile of them, temporarily abandoned together, lying in the dirt. An easy beacon for our family to locate us by.

On an average day, a few of us would gather up from our lazy summer mornings and make our usual neighborhood stroll before the Midwest summer heat drove us back into the AC for the afternoon. A casual trip by the local Quick Stop for some two-cent bubble gum then a short visit to my mother's workplace to check in for the day was common. It was a local car dealership in the small town where most everyone there knew me, or at least knew which adults owned me.

One obstacle lay between us and our destination. It was known to us as a harmless, two-lane highway, and I had crossed it many times—not an overly busy highway, but it had our respect with its larger and more rapid movement of vehicles. Still, we were kids, not yet to understand the specifics, the rules, the anticipation of traffic that is normally left for only adults to understand. With only one vehicle in the distance, I made a go of it to cross the barrier. I knew it to be a truck, a large truck. It was a dump truck to be exact. With my Huffy at ready, I felt confident in my quest. One large push with my effort and the challenge would be met…in theory.

I can't remember my exact thoughts at the time, only that my theory had lost to physics. Perhaps it was my hesitation, noticing the details of the truck, or just my overconfidence in my skills. Either of which that had the blame, the dire predicament I put myself in rapidly faulted as my foot slipped from my pedal. As I stood up, asking my Huffy for the speed it was made for, I only accomplished the task to locate myself in the center of his lane, the truck's lane. My theory did not go as planned. But then I was a kid, with no worries, no plan, and no real understanding of the trouble I had just put myself in. But with the sounds that followed, I was quick to start understanding. The sounds of screeching tires, high-pitched squalls with a loud horn chiming in. A very loud, deep-pitched sounding horn. Almost immediately there was the sudden change in my direction of travel. It wasn't a magical Huffy or special effects as though a movie were transpiring. Yet time did seem to slow to a crawl, even though it took only seconds for the big truck to come to a complete stop.

The smell of hot rubber and asphalt rolled by in a cloud of smoke as I remained glued to the seat of my bike, frozen, as if time had stopped, with my hands so tight to the handles they were as though a permanent fixture to the Huffy. Sounds from around the corner from where I remained perched arose with a hint of urgency. I could hear some mumbling with a distinct tone of panic in his vocabulary. Thinking back, I can only imagine what tragic, horrid thoughts could have been rushing through that driver's mind. With no view of me from over the hood, I had vanished from all but his imagination. Seconds to him was almost hours, no doubt, anticipating the worst—the vision of a child under his truck or under the tires, perhaps worse, not much of a child left at all.

As he rounded the corner of his rig from the dreadful eternal few seconds, the view of me, most certainly, had to be more shocking than if there was no sight of me at all. I was doing my best impression of a cartoon character sliding off the grill of a harmless cartoon truck. With something more than luck, my handle bar, a pedal, and I were in the best position possible. I had lodged into the grill and bumper leading the truck like a perfect fit into a puzzle. The broadside of my bike carried me along safely till the beast came to a complete stop. Almost simultaneously as the driver appeared from around the corner, my bike began to wiggle loose, and I was desperate to hurry it along, thinking that I was certain to be in some sort of trouble. He nervously gave me some assistance and didn't look back as I rode off toward my destination. Remembering, I was asked by a couple of adults of my condition, and of course, I answered anything positive to get me away from there. I had more concern towards my mom tanning my hide than any limbs I had broken or dangling about.

The workplace was quiet other than of work. The gossip had not caught up with my mom yet, but I knew it would. The mechanics had a good view from the garage toward the road, and the sounds had surely gathered their attention. Then as I guessed, as my nerves began to catch up with me, the reports found the ears of my mother. No sooner than she asked me for the truth to the incident, I had no need to answer. She came to her own conclusions by my need to visit a close-by trash can. Perhaps that also answered her questions to my shade of green.

The youth in me left me with little to no true concept of the danger I had escaped from. My knowledge at the time left me only temporarily shocked and frightened. My memory of the time left me with amazing wonder of God's grace. Two insignificant pieces of a bike puzzled into position with tons of moving steel to which I had only taken a short, scary ride rather than taking my last breath. It wasn't just any bike; it was the bike He knew I needed for that day.

Chapter 2:

Room for One

The sounds of the steel slamming against itself lasted only long enough to shock my body into chills. Yet for uncountable seconds, the sound echoed through my head as I stood motionless with my back to the solid steel that locked me in with my own faults. The view ahead was bare concrete and cold steel with a dim future looking to get even darker. It might have been only six or eight feet wide or deep; it also might as well have been a dungeon dug deep into a castle or a pit far into the earth, solid walls with a door to match, no windows to know of the sun or the moon, only a single covered light bulb from above to cast out shadows with the personal touch of the decorator, adding cold steel bunks and stainless-steel plumbing.

My visit gifted me with a care package that I moved to relinquish to the bottom bunk, consisting of a blanket and a mattress roll, one to be knitted from boxes of household steel wool and the other hand-packed with fiberglass insulation from the walls of an abandoned house. Slightly exaggerated, of course, but far from cotton sheets and feather pillows. Stripped of all creature comforts, it could as well have been a bed of nails and a blanket of barbed wire.

The suit I was given was a stylish black and white stripe, a custom fit for anyone between the weights of ninety to a hundred and ninety pounds, and thick, heavy, and faded like an old canvas tarp. The white socks I was allowed to keep from my arrival accentuated the bright orange footwear that now kept my toes from feeling the bare cold concrete floor. Only logic confirmed any facts that the garments were cleaned from the history that adorned them before. My imagination, however, left every smell and itch that the mind could recreate as if it were an outdated hand-me-down from an older sibling.

I was left only to search for something of a comfortable position on some cold steel and the possibility of an alarm clock to wake me up from a bad dream. The empty, quiet space only confirmed the reality as I looked down at my garments assuring me that I was stuck awake in my own nightmare, caught in a trap I set for myself, a weakness I kept liquefied to quench the addiction, nurturing it like a flower even though it grew thorns. Now I was gift wrapped in a shining box, wondering if the doors will ever be opened.

Alone with only my thoughts and my new attire, a cloak of shame, my mind wandered like marbles on a frozen pond. No containment. No direction. No focus. Just the shame and the hatred for myself seemed to be the only thing I wanted to concentrate on. Even with an occasional question to myself on what to do, my own mind repealed any hope. Yet it accepted every ounce of hate as my heart turned hard and cold. With no trouble at all, I could feel how black my heart became at myself, and only shame waited for me outside the walls. If only I could escape, not from the cage, but from myself; I wished only for Death to visit me! It was the one thought I welcomed as I reached the bottom of my total failure and complete worthlessness—death when everything was seemingly lost—death seemed to be the most logical and easiest way to be free of the shame. With my heart so darkened, I tried to convince myself it was the only way. Just as easy as I had once convinced myself that my problems were in my control.

Quit was never in my vocabulary, but when you feel the very bottom of a deep pit beneath your feet, the climb ahead seems too impossible. If I could only close my eyes for the last time in my life! It seemed an easy solution, and I pleaded to the walls my pitiful request. Even remembering my check-in to the concrete hotel, I had been asked about any suicidal thought, an answer to which I had none. Yet also I had no desire to live. My heart, my soul was in limbo as if ripe for the taking to anyone who could pluck a fruit from a tree. My upbringing in the church gave me just enough information to fear such a decision for myself to make. Yet I feared God enough that my plea was only pathetically for the walls to hear. My ignorance was only to hope that God was perhaps eavesdropping in on the one-sided conversations. Perhaps He would show mercy and close my eyes. After all, I wasn't asking Him directly. It was only a suggestion. Yet as soon as those thoughts and whispers came from my lips, I realized true shame. For me to give up was more shameful than the craves and addiction I allowed that brought me to my pit. And then even the bottom of the pit felt far above my reach.

My body grew weaker as the guilt consumed it. I crawled deep into the bunk where the shadows could help hide my shame as if crawling into an open grave, where the wool blanket was of dirt to cover my burial plot. The hate for myself sunk in hard, and my head throbbed in pain. My eyes poured until I was blind, and my throat ached as it held back the screams at myself. Finding escape from the shame, I could nod off into an unrestful sleep occasionally. Yet each time, I awakened to the same cold view, each time to the same thoughts waiting for me. Each time, I was still disappointed for there to be a breath of life left in me!

I had lost so much over something that controlled me so easily. The questions still surrounded me, and the answers that I knew, I also avoided. I was always so strong and determined, and yet I fell so hard. The truth was hiding in my shame, and all the guilt was holding it there like a hostage, and I did not want to face it.

On and off I would nod, each time awakening to the same view. Each time that my eyes opened in shadows I hid in, I still clung to a hope that I was waking from a nightmare. But the truth was always a single light bulb above to remind me. And yet the nightmare I believed myself to be in was nothing compared to the hell I was soon to visit!

Chapter 3:

Life Was Good

One by one, the pills hit the water, not my pills, but hers—those pills that kept our household to a residence of only two. Shock was not the word to describe the expression on her face as I popped each one out of the package. The look of fear, on her face climbed as each pill fell into the blue-tinted water, followed by the climactic flush. The only surprise to me was that she, my wife, did not pass out. I had heard all the excuses and reasons. Some seemed logical and some not. Mostly, I just heard the fear in her voice of expanding the family. Not to mislead you, she wanted children as much as I did. Her only attempt was to be the sensible and logical adult in our relationship. Concerns with owning our own home, more in the bank, and steady business weighed her mind down. However, there was a plain and simple fact that led my decision to introduce her modern chemistry to the indoor plumbing. My biological clock was ticking!

It had been a few years into our marriage, and the plans were there. We just kept putting them off until we could be more prepared. Young and naive, it was our assumption we could be fully prepared for children. Two was on our wish list, and we often joked how blessed we could be to have the two at once. Even with her hesitation, she heard my case, and we agreed on the terms. I should point out, the discussion was equivalent to persuading a child to visit the chair of a dentist, but still I was victorious. Even more joy was felt, knowing the Lord hears even the smallest of prayers. Jokingly, we revisited an old comment, Be careful what you wish for. Looking at those ultrasound pictures with two blobs soon to be named Baby A and Baby B, her face mirrored