When I was nine years old I fell off a bike.  It was horrible.  I was flying down a hill and my flip-flops fell off.  I had those pedals that had the spiky surfaces so I couldn’t put my bare feet on the pedals or risk impalement. I started panicking because my speed was increasing every moment with the descent - I had to do something fast.  Thinking my best option was going onto the grass, I steered my bike to the left and hit an edge.  Suddenly, I was hurling threw the air only to land on my forehead.  Ouch.   

 Blood seemed everywhere and my wailing began.  I walked down the rest of the hill to my aunt’s house, tears streaming and looking for Mom.  Unfortunately, Mom was out and Dad was there.  Let’s just say he was useless and leave it at that.  Not surprisingly, I didn’t ride a bike again for a long time and when I did, it was a white-knuckle, tense experience.

 Fast-forward to today and now I am the Mom with two kids riding bikes.  My kids kept asking me to go for bike rides with them too, not just Daddy or the sitter.  I would say with a shrug, “I don’t have a bike.”  Then my husband bought me a beautiful purple and hot pink cruiser with a big basket.  I had no more excuses, so I tried riding again. 

 Against every instinct I began riding my bike.  My daughter and I started riding to and from her school every day and after a week or two, I noticed things were changing.  I stopped gripping the handle bars for dear life.  I felt more comfortable riding and most of all, I liked it again.  It was fun riding on my pretty, purple bike – I felt so young again, even carefree.   

 Mind you, I will never wear flip-flops while biking ever again and I still don’t make a whole lot of conversation as I don’t want to somehow get distracted and fall.  However, each day I’m a little more confident and most of all, I feel as though I am reconnecting to that little girl inside who was hurt so many years ago.  She’s healing and coming out again…and I am happy to welcome her home.    

How do you mend a broken heart?  How does it get broken?  Is it in one event?  Or are there dozens of offenses before the crack?  Oh, I wish I knew.  For me, it happens over time, dozens of offenses forcing me to dodge and weave hoping to keep my balance.  Some days I can, and some I can’t. In my early twenties, I dated a man, really a boy, who I adored.  It was an incredibly, passionate relationship.  I discovered passion is a slippery thing, it goes both ways.  The intensity you love is equal to the intensity you hate.  My, my does can that lead to interesting times…We stayed together six years. Our break-up was a pitiful good-bye, lasting a year of push and pull.  The end did not result from a lack of love; it ended because of all the hurts.  The wounds left to fester and grow.  He was an alcoholic.  I suspect he still is. I grew up with a father who drank too much and a mother who yelled too much.  My old boyfriend was like home.  I loved and hated home as I loved and hated him.  I’m sure I even became the woman who yelled too often, much to my disgust. I remember after he left, laying in bed, weeping for hours - hurting so deeply from the inside.  I would take deep breaths in all the time because I felt like I couldn’t breathe — never enough air, never any relief.   Over and over, in my mind I would repeat this poem my mother once said to me, “I told my soul to be still and wait. Without love, For I know not what to love. Without hope, For I know not what to hope for. But in the waiting, there is faith.  There is love, hope and faith in the waiting.  I told my soul to be still and wait.”  If I said it enough times, finally a peace would descend.   Comforting me, even if it lasted only a little while. Today I know that comfort was God.  I was ceaselessly praying with my poem.  As I lay in my bed at night, I would imagine myself held in the palm of God’s hand.  I started going to church.  It was when I gave up, that my heart began to mend. I can’t say it happened over night.  It was a process and time was a huge part of it.  I can’t even say it won’t happen again.  But what I can say is, I have faith.  There is love, hope and faith in the waiting.  In that space, God waits for me.  I am held there and gently reminded “courage.”  I told my soul to be still and wait.