Hope And Courage Across America Journal

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.                                    Irving Berlin  We finally reached our destination. The Statue of Liberty. We got on our bikes in Harlem and started down Manhattan.  Darla, Grant, Chanel and myself.  Nicole was not with us.  She just started her senior year of the Nursing program at Northwest University.  It was best she stay in her classes.  Our support crew had grown.  My sister, Jeanne, has been with us the whole way and has been an irreplaceable part of the Hope and Courage Team.  She was joined today by her two adult children, Robby and Jenny.  Our best friends flew in from Oregon, Todd and Media Culver.  Todd rode with us on Nicole’s bike.  We were also surprised by our nephew, Brett, and Nick and Chuck from Brett’s church.   The five of us started pedaling while the others went to Battery Park to wait. 

We shared the bike path with a lot of people.  This is New York, you know.  We smiled, waved, stopped to talk and take pictures.  We attracted attention.  Even in the Big Apple.  America is a huge country.  Believe me, we know.  It is made up of people that are incredibly different and incredibly the same.  Like snowflakes. (OK, that was an incredibly cheesy analogy.) The point is we all need Hope and we all have Courage.  “Hope in Christ and the Courage in yourself to do something with that Hope.”  I can’t tell you how many times we have said those words over the last four months.   Our path went to Ground Zero.  There’s an example Hope and Courage.  A lot of work going on there.  Two construction guys turned away from the ruins and noticed us as we paused and took pictures.  “Whoa, nice bike!”   I told them we were moments away from finishing a Journey we started last May in Gig Harbor, WA.  And the words rolled out of my mouth again, “Hope in Christ and the Courage in yourself to do something with that Hope.”  This would be the last time we said it before we reached the end.  The workers took their cell phones out and took pictures of us.    We reached Battery Park amid a sea of flags and the sounds of bagpipes playing.  But they weren’t for us.  They were part of the 9/11 ceremonies carried over from the day before.  It did make an appropriate background, though. We were met by our support team and shared hugs and congratulations.  We were joined by a group of 40+ boys that drove in from Connecticut.  They were part of Pathways, a mentoring group I meet with each time I go to Danbury.  They were all wearing Hope and Courage tee shirts.  A few others met us and a few more tried but never connected.   Special permission was granted to take my bike over to the Statue of Liberty (thank you, Mark) along with our Team.  We all got on the ferry, even the boys from Danbury.  As we got off the ferry, we had another surprise.  Darla’s sister, Betty and her husband Dave, along with her brother, Paul and his wife Karen were waiting for us on the dock.  What a treat!  We parked my bike in front of the statue and had our pictures taken. We made it. 

Four months, a dozen states, and a couple of thousand miles after we left Gig Harbor we reached our destination.  The Statue of Liberty.  What have we learned?    A lot.  But I will condense it to two things for you now.  One…life is experienced in the journey, not the destination.  And two…it’s not about the miles, it’s about the Message.