Perseverance

It happens everywhere we go…I meet really cool people.  However, I don’t always take pictures of these serendipitous meetings, they are etched only in my memory.  And that was the case for an amazing young woman I met when we were last in Oregon…or so I thought, until I looked closely at some of our pics.

It was kind of hard to miss her, she was wearing a neon vest and was standing beside her heavily encumbered ten speed bicycle. Can you spot her?  Bottom right corner!

She was by herself and had propped her bicycle on the beach, kickstand sinking into the sandy beach, and Haystack Rock behind in the distance.  And there she was, taking a picture with her iPhone of her bike with Haystack Rock as the backdrop.  I immediately asked her if she would like me to take a picture of her with her bike and Haystack Rock…she gratefully and enthusiastically replied, “Oh yes, please, if you wouldn’t mind! Most of my pictures are of my bike and I have hardly any of me and my bike.”

We continued our conversation and it turned out that she was on a three month cross country bike trek, by herself.  She had started in Maine 3 months earlier and now here she was, at the exact spot she had only seen in pictures, but had set as her finish line, the famous Haystack Rock in Oregon.  She exclaimed that finally being here in person and seeing Haystack Rock for herself was even better than she had imagined!   And we just happened to be there as she was crossing her finish line.

I never did get her name, and I was kicking myself that I hadn’t gotten a proper picture of her with my camera, but God is in his grace allowed me this moment, this capture. It gets better…she just happened to be in the background as I was taking panoramic shots of the beach and the ocean horizon! Keep in mind that I had to crop the photo to zoom in as best I could so the quality isn’t the greatest, but here it is…

A woman and her bike. She is bent over, taking a photo of her feet touching the Pacific Ocean…after 3 months of bicycling by herself, facing fears and overcoming physical exhaustion during extreme heat in the midwest…here she was, all the way from Maine…she had persevered and now she was crossing her finishing line.  And we got to witness it.  I consider it an honor.  An inspiration.

Setting goals, persevering and achieving.  Victory moments are sweet, but victory moments are only victory moments with perseverance & endurance.  Am I ready to persevere, to endure,  keeping my eyes on my goal?  Do I have a “Haystack Rock” in my life that I am trying to get to?  Am I willing to endure and persevere to get there?  I must remember the victory moment that awaits, the moment that will make it all worth it.  And just like that woman I will exclaim that ‘It is even better than I imagined!”