Full Circle

Today I have a full-circle sort of feeling.  I rode a bicycle for the first time in many years, and my father rode with me through the streets of a small Carolina town.  In Church School Blues, my younger self is a bike riding kid who uses her bike to grab a sense of freedom even as she feels herself trapped behind an invisible chain-link fence of silence, far away from the Carolina home she yearns for.

From Church School Blues:

"I feel like my life has become a Salvador Dali painting.

And another thing I've recently learned—I can stand persecution. I've mentioned already about how we Adventists have to be ready for the Great Persecution when The World will turn on us for being a Peculiar People. Well, I am being persecuted for being a Peculiar Person, so I am getting plenty practice in bearing up.

As soon as I'm away from that school, back on my bike in the afternoons, I start fitting back into my skin. I merge with the wind and let it take all that awful hairspray right out of my hair and lift me up so I feel like I am flying. I can really ride that bike. I cross my arms and steer with no hands, making the turns and everything just by shifting my weight a tiny bit. As long as I'm on my bike, I am still keen."