I love spending the holidays with my family of 5. It’s important to me for many reasons. So I know it took some courage for my son to tell me that he would be missing the holidays at home during his Senior Year of college. (He was a sophomore at the time.) He said he was planning to go to Nepal on a school trip.
If you have been following me for awhile, you know I used to have a doctorate in worrying. When he told me this I was in the active stage of gaining my doctorate in “trust.” So this was a true test. I read a lot of Max Lucado to help me with this overcoming worry (Dale Carnegie too.) I found a statistic that was something like 80% (or more) of what we worry about never comes to pass. So I decided I wasn’t going to spend any time worrying about my son’s future trip to Nepal. I could handle the fact he wouldn’t be home for the holidays – but Nepal? I didn’t know much about Nepal and just knew he would be far away and what if something happened?
Well turns out that his Senior year was December of 2020 and nobody was going anywhere. What if I had wasted every day of 2018, 2019 and 2020 worrying about this trip to Nepal? And then it didn’t even happen? One of Max Lucado’s quotes is “Worry is to joy what a Hoover vacuum cleaner is to dirt: might as well attach your heart to a happiness-sucker and flip the switch.” (Pretty accurate.)
In January of 2021, this same child started talking about wanting to do a 100-mile bike ride. I didn’t really pay attention too much. Other than I thought he was crazy and kids are crazy and surely this would pass. Well as we approached summer, he asked if he could forego a summer job so he could train for this bike ride. It’s then that I found out it was called The Triple Bypass and it would take him up three mountain passes (Juniper Pass, Loveland Pass and Vail Pass) – roughly 12,000 plus elevation and 106 miles. I decided right then and there to NOT worry about this race and to support him the best I could. So that is what he did. He trained all summer.
The race was yesterday. He was riding with his roommate Max and Max’s dad. Max’s dad had ridden the Triple ByPass several times before. My husband went over (thankfully I-70 was open) to offer support to Joe. They got started at about 6:00 a.m.
He sent me a link so I could follow along on STRAVA and I’m not sure if that was good or not. I started following along from the comfort of my couch and all of the sudden he stopped moving. He stopped for awhile. I texted my husband. He had noticed the same thing. I grabbed my mind. He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay. Turns out after about 14 miles a “spoke’ broke. When I heard that I was so terribly disappointed for him. But my husband went and picked him and his bike up; drove him back to the start to a bike shop, got the spoke fixed and then dropped him back off in Loveland with his roommate and his dad. Joe was so determined to continue the race, he asked those around him if anyone had tape. There was no tape, but someone had a bandaid so he tried using the bandaid to hold the spoke in.
I’m so incredibly proud of Joe (my son) for jumping back in and riding the 60 plus miles up Loveland Pass and up Vail Pass and completing the race. It’s a great example in never giving up. I’m proud of me and how far I’ve come with my “trust’ doctorate and it showed me there is still work to be done to earn that degree. Congratulations to all the riders!
Congratulations Joe for persevering. Congratulations dad and mom for holding your minds.
As someone who deals with anxiety I am working on trust too. Thank you for sharing this.
Such a AWESOME accomplishment for Joe and the other riders! Congratulations! And you too Patty. I have that worry Gene too but am at a better place now also. It definitely feels better on this side of it. I’m happy for you Patty and your family.