At 5 am the other morning, I was biking to work on the Lexington Avenue sidewalk.

“Wow,” I said to myself as I pedaled into the shade under a line of trees, “you really can’t see ANYTHING under these trees.

The street lights provide ample light for getting around before daybreak, but they only make the shade darker.

Just the evening before, I was walking away from a meeting in the company of both heart surgeons when we met someone in the hallway.

“Where’d you get that scar on your forehead?” Dr. Halloran asked.

“Bicycle accident,” he said.

Dr. Halloran laughed at him a little and the three exchanged pleasantries.

Once out of ear shot, I said, “I wanted to ask if he had a helmet on, but I decided not to.  Can you get an injury like that if you’re wearing a helmet?”

“Oh, yes,” both surgeons informed me in unison.

“I just bought a bike helmet,” Dr. Dickson said, “and I looked at it and thought, why am I wearing this?”

Dr. Halloran had a little joke for me.

“What do you do if you have a bicycle crash while wearing a helmet?” he asked as he pressed the elevator button.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Throw away the helmet,” he supplied graciously.  “They’re designed to absorb the impact and shatter.  I hate wearing them,” he added, “but I made my kids wear them, so…”

“Yeah, same with me,” Dr. Dickson said with something close to a sigh.

So this morning…. I had just made the mental note about the darkness when I hit something.  A crunching noise tore through the early morning calm, and I was pretty sure everyone in a three-block radius woke up.  The front tire of my bike bumped over the object, then my feet flew off the pedals and something hit my ankle, then my back tire careened over it with a thud.

It wasn’t a person or an animal.  That was reassuring.  The sound was a cross between a hard plastic box splintering, and an aluminum can being squashed.  I smelled beer.  But it couldn’t have been as small as a can, since it knocked against my ankles.

In a normal story, I suppose, the biker would have turned around, pulled out her cell phone, and investigated things.

I kept going.   I was already late-ish to work.

A few hundred yards farther, my back tire rim hit a rough area of the sidewalk as if there were no tire protecting it.   In fact, there was no tire protecting it, I realized, as I got off and felt the complete deflation of both my tire and my morning ride.

I was past the river, so I walked the rest of the way to the hospital, escorting my bike.

I got home the same way.  Halfway home, under some trees, I saw a child’s scooter lying in two pieces.   Could this be a related detail?

Just a few days later, with the help of $150 and my favorite Elkhart Bicycle Shop, I’m back in business WITH two high-powered lights.  Now maybe I’ll just drive in the road instead of the sidewalk.

“Don’t worry,” the bike shop guy told me today, “most of the people who get hit on the road are biking to work at 4 or 5 in the morning.”

Smiley face emoticon, Mr. Bike Shop Man.

But with my plans of going to the middle East, and my morning bike trips through Elkhart in the dark, I’m puzzling over the surgeons’ comments about why they wear bike helmets.

I wear one because I make my kids wear them.

What did I hear in both of their voices?  I don’t commonly hear them both agreeing that they do things they don’t want to do.

Sacrifice.  That was it.  When you love someone, you sacrifice your own comfort for their good.

I suppose if I had kids, I probably would rein in a few of my activities, too. I might not live where I do, and I might not fly to the middle East.  I might not have the job I have, and I might not bike to it in the dark.

But Jesus didn’t have kids, and his life was an unbroken sacrifice circuit.  I have a whole collection of sacrificial heroes who also didn’t have kids.  Even though being a parent makes sacrifice less avoidable, I think God calls everyone to it, even in little things like being a good example.

Oddly enough, one of the reasons I wear a bike helmet, is because of all the little kids in my neighborhood who watch me.  Although I prefer my head intact as well.

But I hope to develop the muscle of sacrifice far beyond bike helmets.  One of my sources of inspiration for this is missionary Amy Carmichael, and I will end today’s post with a quote from her little book, If:

If I put my own happiness before the well-being of the work entrusted to me;

if, though I have this ministry and have received mercy, I faint…

then I know nothing of Calvary love.