I’m peddling along the bike path
and then I spot him to my left—an egret so close I
could almost touch him. I brake and cruise slowly to a stop. Not wanting to
scare the bird, I try not to move much as I twist around to retrieve my phone
from my pack behind me to get a shot. Right here
is where everything went off the rails.
Because I was trying not to create
a disturbance, I kept my right foot on the bike pedal. My pivot was also to my
right, and you can probably guess what happened next. I lost my balance,
started falling, and could not recover. I prayed as I went down into the road
that a car was not coming. Thankfully, it wasn’t. But, splat, I hit hard on my
right hip.
The last bone density test I had indicated
my bones were on the verge of a not so good disease. That was several years
ago. So, when I hit the concrete, as I caught my breath, I wondered if I should
head to the urgent care for an x-ray—the last way I
wanted to spend time on this vacation. Someone stopped to help me, but by then,
I was on my feet still determined to get a picture of that bird who hadn’t
moved an inch even with all the commotion. “I’m bird crazy,” I said to the
fellow. Fortunately, I’d found a fellow enthusiast.
“I’ve done
exactly the same thing,” he said.
I later called
a friend in medicine, and she triaged me. Fortunately, it seemed besides being
really sore, I was okay.
I’d been walking
around for years thinking if I had a fall, my bones wouldn’t withstand it. But I
was wrong. I was stronger than I knew.
In the
spiritual sense, we may be concerned a hard hit will do us in as well. But in a much greater way, we
are also stronger than we know.
“I can do
all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13 NKJV). When Paul
wrote these words, he had taken hard hits himself, but he knew that God would
give us strength to face whatever is before us.
“Did you
learn your lesson from this?” Jerry asked later referring to keeping both feet on the ground in this kind of situation.
I sure did.
More than one.