Pass the Sprinkles - Our Last Post

M

The pedaling may have slowed down, but we haven’t. We spent the last few days climbing up rock faces, summiting a mountain, and talking about what’s next for us. We’ve looked at purchasing homes in Peoria, and we’ve wrestled with life aspirations and how we hope to live them out. Oh, and we’ve toyed with the idea of training for a half ironman next year.

But I want to remind you, you’re not going to wander through Kroger and find us on the cover of Wheaties. We run marathons and aim for the five hour mark, not to qualify for Boston. We rock climb to challenge ourselves and be with friends, not to prepare for free soloing El Capitan. We biked across half the country not for bragging rights or because we look sexy in spandex, but because we wanted to write a foolhardy adventure into the story of our marriage. And we do all these things because we believe one thing. Love requires action.

You see, I tend to think life gives us a bowl of vanilla ice cream and it is love’s job to add the sprinkles, hot fudge and cherry. And the job often isn’t pretty. For every stunning mountain there’s been miles of sweat, discouragement and soreness in the nether region. But love is an action and for hundreds of miles that action was nothing more than pedaling and perspiring. I don’t know what’s on next year’s horizon but I know it’ll take grit and courage to find it because love takes action.

It might be moving to the burbs and raising little adventurers, maybe it’ll be summiting Rainer. In either case, I’m filled to the brim with anticipation as the wife and I chart the next course and points the sails toward the horizon.

So let me conclude this adventure with the closing words from The Chronicles of Narnia - words that instill hope and set my heart free to wander.

The Last Battle C.S. Lewis

“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

It’s time to pass the sprinkles.