Accidents teach!

There's nothing like a motorcycle accident to get one's attention. Unfortunately, I was the one involved.

About a week ago, I spent a lovely morning riding the hills around Chattanooga with two friends from work. The sky was clear and the air was crisp. We buzzed through town, then climbed Lookout Mountain. We sped along the highway which runs along the west brow of the mountain, offering beautiful vistas of the valley far below. We stopped for a leg stretch at Cloudland Canyon State Park in Northwest Georgia.

On the way back to Chattanooga, I got separated from my buddies. I did a U-turn, then began a hot pursuit to catch back up to them. I exceeded the posted speed limit in my attempt. We had discussed driving through the Chickamauga National Battlefield, so when I noticed the sign pointing to the visitor's center, I suspected my friends had made that right turn off the highway. I braked hard to slow down enough to make the same turn.

There are many things an experienced motorcyclist learns over the years on a bike. One, is the importance of the adhesion maintained between the bike tires and the surface of the road. When a bike loses that adhesion, you're in trouble. I braked hard. The rear tire locked up and began to skid, then fish-tail. I knew I was going down when I hit a patch of pea-gravel on the road. In what must have taken just two seconds, I lost control of the bike and splattered on the pavement, bike sliding on its side into a painted "triangle" at the intersection. Oh, crap!

Only a man would understand that my first thought was of the damage I'd done to my beautiful Suzuki. It was lying on its side, windshield busted in a dozen pieces, gas leaking out of the tank, a small debris field trailing 30 feet back up the road. I'd been in this predicament before. It's never pleasant.

When people ask me if I've ever been in a motorcycle accident, I tell them yes, three times: once due to rain, once due to loose gravel and once due to sheer stupidity. I rarely give details about the third accident. My fourth is now feeling a lot like my third.

People gathered around me almost immediately. They wanted to know if I was okay. I wanted to pick up my motorcycle. They wanted to know if I was bleeding. I wanted to find my GPS unit. They wanted to know if they should call 911 for an ambulance. I wanted to know how much repairing my motorcycle was going to cost. They wanted to check me for broken bones. I wanted to check how much paint and metal I left on the pavement.

We all concluded that I was okay, for the most part, though my jacket and ski bibs were shredded in places. My elbow was starting to hurt and I'd probably skinned my knee, but I was reasonably sure that nothing was broken. We finally found the GPS unit, with appeared undamaged and we righted the bike back up on its side stand. My buddies, not finding me up the road, attempted a phone call to my cell phone. I informed them of my accident and asked them to come find me. The eventually did, in spite of the incorrect location I gave them in my confused state. I called my wife, Jeni, to fill her in on what happened.

After determining that I was okay and the bike, surprisingly, was driveable, we left the scene. I limped the bike home on surface streets. It took me about 45 minutes. My left arm was really starting to ache and hurt every time I had to squeeze the clutch lever to shift. My chiropractor later agreed that I had probably hyper-extended my left elbow, damaging the muscles and ligaments that connect up and down my arm. To this day, I have a hard time stretching my arm out straight or bending my elbow to touch my face.

In the midst of all this, I'm having an ongoing conversation with my Father-God, about why this had to happen. My brother, Paul, is always asking me to consider where God is, in the different circumstances I face daily. So, I ask God, what's this all about. "Why did you allow this to happen, Lord?" "What are you trying to tell me, that required this to get my attention?" It's obvious, as I replay the accident in my mind and in my conversations with others, that God protected me incredibly. It could have been much worse. I could have hit a car at that intersection; I could have spun out into traffic. The motorcycle wasn't damaged beyond repair. I sustained no broken bones. "Why, God, did it happen this way?"

Before I write what I believe are the answers to those questions, I need to fill in some of the back story regarding God and me and motorcycles. I bought my first motorcycle, a 1979 Honda CX5oo Custom, not long before my oldest son was born. Jeni was very supportive of the purchase and we saw it as a means of saving money on my commute to work. I owned that bike for about 4 years. My second motorcycle was a large 1981 Honda GL1100, otherwise known as a Goldwing. I rode that until we moved to Tennessee.

As we were preparing for our move from Southern Oregon to Chattanooga, God and I had a direct conversation about my trusting Him to provide the means for us to do what he had ordained. It was clear he was orchestrating our move accross country and he wanted to make it clear to me that he would make it happen financially. In spite of that conversation, one of the few times in my life where the Spirit spoke directly to me, I sold the Goldwing, in a moment of doubt, to help purchase plane tickets for the family.

It wasn't until we got settled into our new life here in Chattanooga, that I began to miss the motorcycle rides I enjoyed so much. That's when God revealed to me, in his very gentle way, that I had sold the Goldwing to help him out, when I doubted his ability to fund the move. It came down to trust issues. Did I really trust God to do what he made clear he would do. The answer I had to give, sadly, was that I didn't trust God. I repented of that sin and confessed my disbelief and lack of trust. With that heart issue dealt with, I asked God to replace what I had so foolishly lost: a motorcycle, of his choosing, that would bring joy not only to me, but also be a means of blessing my family. In March of 2002, God led Jeni to a fixer-upper 1982 Honda GL500 Silverwing Interstate with matching sidecar.

My son, Joel, and I began work on that bike immediately and we had it running about two weeks later. God did use that motorcycle to be a blessing to me and my family. I gave many rides to kids and adults alike in that sidecar. Most days I rode it without the sidecar to and from work. I felt God's smile and pleasure as I rode, wind in my face, on the country roads surrounding Chattanooga. God had restored what I had lost in my doubt. He gave back, generously, as he always does. He blessed me with something that brought much joy and delight to me and the kids.

This past fall (2008), I asked God if he'd be okay with me trading up to a larger motorcycle. The GL500 was underpowered, especially with the sidecar attached. I wanted a larger motorcycle to haul two adults comfortably on day trips. My children are all getting older and heavier and I needed more power to haul the extra weight. In October, I listed the Silverwing and sidecar on Craigslist at a price God had led us to set. It sold easily. I could have sold it many times over for my asking price. God was in the sale.

Then I began to look for another, larger, motorcycle. I only had the money from the sale of the Silverwing to work with, so I had to find as much motorcycle as I could with what I had to offer. It took about two weeks to find the Suzuki, and once again, God was in the details. I really didn't know what kind of a motorcycle the GSX1100G was, nor was I sure that was the kind of bike I needed to accomplish what God wanted. He made it evident in orchestrating the sale, the pick-up and the affirmation that this was the bike he wanted me to have. I was thrilled. On the ride home, following the transaction, across the Northwest Georgia mountains, the word that kept coming to mind was, "effortless". This new motorcycle was powerful. The previous owners had also taken very good care of it. It looked nearly new, even though it was a 1993 model.

All that to say God had blessed us again, with a beautiful machine, to be used for his glory and our delight. There was one problem: it is a very fast motorcycle. Suzuki took a "crotch rocket" engine and put it on a sport-touring frame. As I began to ride it, I discovered its ability to accelerate very quickly. This bike is by far, the most powerful motorcycle I had ever owned. Abusing that ability became a real temptation.

Back to my accident. As I began to contemplate what God might be saying to me in this situation, I was reminded of the many times, recently, I had well exceeded the speed limit to race along the roads and freeways. I had told myself again and again, that "Just becaus the bike will do 90 (mph) doesn't mean I need to go 90." You'd have to be a guy and a motorcycle rider to understand the temptation to grab a fist-full of throttle and rocket off from an intersection, testing your ability to jump through the motorcycle gears as fast as you can. It's fun, it's adrenalin-inducing, it's dangerous, it's exhilerating. Speed is addictive.

Moments before my crash alongside Georgia Hwy 27, I had been doing 75 in a 55. I locked the brakes on the Suzuki in my attempt to slow down from going too fast. In hindsight, I should have let go of the brakes and coasted past the turn. In my panic, I squeezed harder. The spill was the result of speed plus inexperience. My carelessness had caused the accident and I was lucky to walk away from it. God was in this--I had no doubt about that.

So what was He saying to me in this? It was on Monday, two days after the accident, on my way to work, that the Spirit brought the lesson into focus. First, I had obviously been abusing the gift God had given me for my enjoyment and to bless others. The bike was God's. He had given it to me, for a purpose. I had forgotten that. I was treating this machine like it was mine; like it was mine to spend or squander as I pleased. Wrong. I was acting irresponsibly with what God had given me. I was abusing the tool God had given me. I had begun to form a habit of driving fast on the motorcycle. I had forgotten that I am a steward of his resources, not the master. Like many things in life God entrusts to us, we walk a fine line between using those things for good or abusing them for our own gratification. It's not that God doesn't want us to have fun and enjoy what he's given us, it's that what he's given can be used for good or for evil.

Consider what God gives his children for their enjoyment: music, beauty, food, sexual intimacy, relationships, work, drink, leisure, pleasure--all these are gifts God gives for our delight, much like the Garden of Eden was meant as a place of delight to Adam and Eve. But, like our first parents, we are bent on taking what God has given freely and generously and twisting and distorting those things into addiction, idolotry, self-gratification, weapons and the like. We misuse and abuse.

Legalists would say we have no right to those things because of our propensity to misuse them. The legalist abstains and restricts, in an attempt to control behavior. Opponents to motorcycle joy, say that because motorcycles kill and because they're too easy to misuse, then we should never use them. They tend to hold the same opinion regarding alcohol, music, movies, dancing, etc. Motorcycles do kill when they're abused. Alcohol destroyes when abused. Movies and music and dancing and sex can lead to destructive behaviors when used for purposes other than what God intended. But we can't throw babies out with bathwater, whether they are motorcycles or beers.

The second lesson God is teaching me through all this is that not only is the motorcycle a gift to be used for God's purposes, but that my life and health are gifts given that I dare not take for granted or put at needless risk. Too many people are counting on me being present for life. I have a wife and kids who need me to be present. I have a church community who needs me to be around to contribute what God has for me to contribute. I have friends and associates at work who are counting on me to do my job and fulfill my responsibilities. I am not mine to squander. I am accountable for what I do with my body. I am a temple of the living God and while I am convinced that God loves me to enjoy the blessings of motorcycle riding, He's not pleased when I take my life into my hands and put myself at unnecessary risk.

Yes, riding motorcycles is risky. Anybody who says otherwise is either selling something or is in denial. But many things in life are risky. Loving God is risky. Loving others is risky. Driving a car is risky. Going on a trip is risky. Everything we do involves a certain amount of risk. Every day we unconsciously make risk-assessments to determine what we are willing and not willing to do, based on our internal risk-verses-benefit scale. Those internal risk-assessment monitors are influenced by a number of factors, including our upbringing, our experiences, what others tell us of their experience and how we perceive the world around us.

Everyone takes risks. We just disagree on what is an acceptable amount of risk in light of the perceived benefits. Motorcycle riders take on a certain amount of risk in order to enjoy the benefits of riding. Motorcyclists are comfortable with the risk and do what they can to minimize the risk by wearing protective clothing and gear, and by driving defensively--being very aware of what's going on around them. Motorcyclists are also at peace with those who choose not to ride, as long as the non-riders don't force their risk-aversion on those who do.

So what is God trying to say to you? What areas of your life are not yet under the authority of God? What areas of your life have you taken into your own hands to misuse? Someone said that the more powerful the gift, the more destructive the abuse. Sexual intimacy is a very, very powerful gift God gives married couples for their enjoyment and as an adhesive to hold a marriage together in the storms of life. Sexual intimacy, outside the context for which it was created, is a horrifically destructive force that causes lifetime levels of heart damage, sometimes with eternal consequences. People abuse food. They abuse work. They make relationships become something for which they were not intended.

God used my motorcycle accident as a wake-up call in my life. It was a carefully measured means of discipline, administered in loving grace, to remind me of truths I was disregarding. God allowed me to get hurt, financially and physically, in just the right amount, to get my attention and set me on a path of correction.

What is God trying to say to you? Are you listening? Remember, accidents teach.

Brother Dave