He’s Back in the Saddle Again… Working out Daddy Issues

After almost seven months of up again – down again and finally up again medical issues a treatment stemming from my December 28 motorcycle accident or Involuntary Dismount I have finally been medically released and as “normal” as they can get me.

After a week off the blood thinners I was time to get back on the horse so Saturday I did a helmet buying trip and Sunday took my first ride on my brother-in–law’s bike. I must say the first ten minutes were tense but I was then able to take a deep breath and relax for a very enjoyable ride. As it happens the route I chose took me within a few hundred feet of the site of the accident. So along the way I decided that facing my fear was an imperative. When the time came I took a left turn onto the same freeway onramp that nearly took my life seven months earlier.

So I told both Fear and the Devil that it was true that they were more powerful than me but that anything they had to say to me they would first need to take up with my Father and I was sure He was not intimidated by them at all.

This raises a question of faith in The Father…

For much of my life I had real issues with a God who chose to reveal himself as a father. I didn’t meet my biological father until I was 19 and we have only spent three day together. Let’s leave it at he was not available to father me and even if he were he wasn’t really up to the job. Because of that I have looked with a combination of suspicion and desire at the relationships that friends had with their fathers and felt I had been cheated out of something special and required to bring a boy into manhood. So I did the only thing I could… I faked it! I put on my best “real Man” act and worked the “checklist”

A Real Man can:

· Drive a car… Fast Check I even got a racing license
· Get a woman Check That obsession destroyed a marriage and nearly killed me
· Hold your liquor Check but another addiction and could have died

So in the end my best efforts and flawed list turned me into a middle age boy but not a man.

This whole time I was exposed to teaching that my “Father” in heaven loved me. I accepted that but always ran that through a filter created by my father and other men I knew and concluded that you could keep that kind of love.

Over and over again my life would spin out of control causing countless harm to myself and those I most cared about and I was powerless to avoid the “potholes” that tripped me or come close to ever removing or healing the hurt I caused. Slowly along the way I began to learn about this God who insisted on being Father.

I went through at least four phases:

Are you kidding Me Phase? Mostly I was angry that God got to decide to be Father, who did this God think he was. Didn’t he know that this made the whole “God thing” even harder for me. This phase was also mixed with a lot of pretending it didn’t bother me, in fact while I was a paid member of the professional clergy I was in this phase. I’m not telling you to mistrust you Pastor just give them some slack they are people too. This phase had prayers like “Take this away from me I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

The bones you have crushed cry out for mercy Phase I Psalm 32 David says this to God while he was refusing to repent for his sin. For him and later Me God’s love was to great to allow us to rebel without being forced to deal with Him. For me he accelerated the consequence of my Sin while limiting or removing all my options for healing or peace apart from Him.

I surrender Phase Finally I came to an end of myself and surrendered to the God who wanted to be my Father. I gave up my “rights” and allowed for the possibility that God was God and might actually know what was best for me and could be a father to the fatherless.

My Dad can beat up your dad Finally I was home broken and collapsed in the arms of my Father and it turns out that I needed fathering in a way that only He could Father. It had nothing to do with my absentee father, even if I had the best of all human fathers I would need fathering from God to complete the fathering that I or any man needs to truly live a life that can be used by God for His Glory.

With the deepest respect for A W Tozer… I do not believe God must wound a man deeply to use him deeply. I do believe that we are all wounded deeply by our choices, the choices of others and the consequences of those choices and we have to choose to allow God into those deeply wounded places. Where we choose to keep Him out we are limiting a way He could both heal and use us. So in that way I do agree with Tozer, God must touch and handle with seeming unbearable intimacy our deep wounds before he can use us deeply.

So what does this have to with a motorcycle adventure Blog? Just this, that accident was a wound and helped build my faith in God but is was by far NOT my deepest wound or the deepest place that God needed to touch me. Because I was over time able to allow Him to go deep, trusting Him with this was not a challenge to my faith. One day, possible very soon something is going to happen to you or your family that you could not have been prepared for and that time will go better if you have allowed God to go Deep and father you in ways you couldn’t have imagined.

I am glad to be back in the saddle but I am so much gladder I have a real Father in Heaven.

Involuntary Dismount and a long slow recovery

On December 28, the last day of the regular NFL season I took a leisurely ride before the Denver San Diego game but I didn’t make it home for twenty six days. A few hours into the ride I had an accident, or what I call an Involuntary Dismount and while I would like to give you the details I have complete amnesia from one mile before the accident site until nine days later.
From what I know second hand, the crash took place on a freeway onramp and the bike was destroyed by the guardrail while I was blessed enough to fly over or under it.
After a total of six and a half weeks I have returned to work part time.
As far as riding again, I have not decided yet but have three issues to resolve before I could ride again.
1. The bike and safety equipment were destroyed so I would need to spend lots of $$$ to ride again.
2. I am on blood thinners for about the next six months so riding and knife juggling may not be wise right now.
3. I view riding as a risk management exercise where I need to identify a risk, make a quick mitigation decision and execute it without hesitation. Given my memory lapse of the event, I have no lessons to learn and do not know if I made an error in judgment or execution that caused this injury.
Of the three issues the third is the most troubling for me.

I am still convinced of the need for a man to have adventure and am seeking alternate forms of adventure while riding is not an option.
The one thing I would never want to happen is to hear that my experience led anyone to abandon riding or any adventure because of my story. Men need adventure and more than that any man who lives life with the goal of being careful or to tries to manage life with the goal of avoiding risk is living a shallow life and taking on part of God’s job in providing for them.
Please continue to ride (or whatever) and let God be the one who protects you. He wasn’t done with me and arranged for me to miss the guardrail – He is a Big God and can handle the small stuff.
The picture is what was left of the bike.

If you want to hear more details or see more pictures of my recovery go to my wife's blog at

http://www.robbieiobst.blogspot.com/