Just got back from five days of cycling approximately 400 miles across the beautiful state of Iowa. This was my 7th RAGBRAI and my favorite thus far. Here are a few of the highlights:
• Having my girlfriend Sundae along for her first RAGBRAI ever and seeing it all through her eyes. This girl just started riding in December and she rocked it!
• “Randomly” meeting a new group of friends, Team Groucho, who are the neatest people and enjoying getting to know them and hearing their stories.
• Experiencing great hospitality along the way. Amazing!
• Having the most beautiful weather conditions – the best yet.
• Getting to have lots of time with my wonderful hubby and leaving work and school demands behind for a week.
• Enjoying the beauty of God’s creation and just being outside all day every day – I love it!
• Incredible spiritual conversations throughout the week. I love those!
I’m so grateful for the opportunity and ability to be able to experience something like this each year. It’s my favorite week and it refreshes me like nothing else. I’m not sure if its working my butt off on that bike, sweating like a big dog all day, or just challenging myself to be better each year, but this ride really flips my switch.
What ignites you?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A SENSELESS TRAGEDY
The headlines of my hometown newspaper this morning read “Murder-Suicide at Bank Stuns Elgin”. Unfortunately these kinds of headlines are not uncommon in our society today, but today I’m writing about this one because this was a husband and wife that I knew. Ray and Diane Dye had been married for many years and had a beautiful family including kids and grandkids. He was a local firefighter, she a coach and teacher. I have a lot of fond memories of Diane, first playing basketball against one another in high school, and later playing with one another in local tournaments. I knew her to be spirited and competitive, compassionate, excellent in all she did, and a fun person to hang with. Ray shared her competitive nature was a great sharer of stories.
So what went wrong? How did this senseless tragedy happen? Why did this senseless tragedy happen? What would cause a man to kill the woman he had loved for so long, the mother of his children, and then kill himself? These are all questions that will be speculated by everyone, but in reality, there is no answer that will relieve the devastation, the grief, or the anger that will be felt about this heartbreaking incident that has forever changed the lives of Ray and Diane and those who loved them.
I am haunted by these questions. I cannot stop playing them out in my mind over and over again and there are simply no answers here. But this I know; God is no stranger to the devastating loss of His child. His word tells us that He is the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 2:1-4 I can only pray that in the absence of answers, God will dispense His compassion; that it will be felt by God’s Spirit through the multitude of prayers that will be offered on behalf of the family, through the cards that will be sent, the meals that will be prepared, the words of sympathy that will be shared, the physical presence of those just “being there”. I pray it will be dispensed by the stories that are shared by the impact their lives have made on the lives of others.
Though their lives ended in senseless tragedy, the lives of Ray and Diane were not senseless. They each had purpose and meaning and they were loved.
So what went wrong? How did this senseless tragedy happen? Why did this senseless tragedy happen? What would cause a man to kill the woman he had loved for so long, the mother of his children, and then kill himself? These are all questions that will be speculated by everyone, but in reality, there is no answer that will relieve the devastation, the grief, or the anger that will be felt about this heartbreaking incident that has forever changed the lives of Ray and Diane and those who loved them.
I am haunted by these questions. I cannot stop playing them out in my mind over and over again and there are simply no answers here. But this I know; God is no stranger to the devastating loss of His child. His word tells us that He is the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 2:1-4 I can only pray that in the absence of answers, God will dispense His compassion; that it will be felt by God’s Spirit through the multitude of prayers that will be offered on behalf of the family, through the cards that will be sent, the meals that will be prepared, the words of sympathy that will be shared, the physical presence of those just “being there”. I pray it will be dispensed by the stories that are shared by the impact their lives have made on the lives of others.
Though their lives ended in senseless tragedy, the lives of Ray and Diane were not senseless. They each had purpose and meaning and they were loved.
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