Did I “Find God” On the Road?

Riding below the pillars in Valley of the Gods State Park, March 2022.

My dad likes to say, “I raised you guys ‘religion neutral’ so you could choose for yourself.”

I didn’t grow up in church on Sundays or going to temple weekly, much to the chagrin and disapproval of my grandmas and grandpas. My heritage begged for one or the other, but outside the bar mitzvah’s growing up and the occasional christening, I’ve never considered myself connected to a higher power.

Instead, I grew up in 12 Step rooms, watching moms and dads (my own Dad included) mending the trauma they’d all inherited from their moms and dads. I saw humanity. I saw pain. I saw people begging to God for help and forgiveness.

I grew up loosely believing in the universal spirit - the one who could grant serenity and acceptance in the things I couldn’t change, the courage to change what I could, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

While spending years on the road, whether riding across the western American plains, or through the biting cold winds of southern Patagonia, or throwing water skywards in the frigid water of a Colombian waterfall, I felt closer to God than I ever had. 

When my dad nearly died in a motorcycle crash just hours into my own moto journey, it was hard not to feel the presence of something greater. 

When I went through loss - one of the greatest of my life - while surviving the blistering heat of the Northen Amazon, I had to rely on not my OWN strength to get through it all, but the strength granted to me to accept what I couldn’t change.

The courage and the wisdom I relied on to take me through my time traveling was hard-earned: I fought, cried, bled, and broke bones in the persuit of a life I’m proud of. I’m still not sure I want to grant that strength to a divine, “Holy God.” 

I don’t believe I was created in God’s image. Can’t buy into the idea of “Christ as my lord and savior.” I’m not always strong in my belief in an eternal, paradisical afterlife. 

Father and Holy Ghost? Sure. The Son? That’s a little harder to accept. 

And yet, when I experience things like I did last week: watching the sun rest behind the Rocky Mountains, with golden rays of light climbing skywards and the tell-tale “purple mountains majesty” painted against the city backdrop, only to feel what I can only describe as grace - the finger of God reaching out and touching my heart, I’m more and more convinced. 

So when people ask me, and there have been a bunch: “Mike, did you find God out there on the road?”

I would say that I think I’ve always had an idea about God, but wasn’t able to feel a connection close enough to that omnipitent energy. It wasn’t until I was able to get out and see what that spirit - the “God of my Understanding” as some of the clients I’ve been working with recently would say - had in store for me in a world beyond my comfort zone. I feel it more now; in the faces of the people who light up when they see me, or in those moments where I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be at that exact moment in time.

The last two years have brought me closer to a higher power than I’ve been able to feel before; it feels less lonely, and feels like it came at the perfect time.

How’s that for a “quarter life crisis?”