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1/1/2009 - The Road Less TraveledTHE ROAD LESS TRAVELED Mark Leonard EDITOR’S NOTE: In our Summer 08 issue we ran a story about a team of Redlands cyclists who participated in the trans-continental Race Across American (RAAM). This story is more than an update about their successful journey – which raised over $150,000 for special education. It is a story about another journey that has taken one family from fear and confusion to the joy and peace that comes from discovering God’s hidden purposes. At six in the morning, as his wife slept in a bed nearby, Doug Richards flipped through channels on the television in their hospital room. He stopped on a channel that was running an episode of the Andy Griffith Show. Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by Andy Griffith, was talking to his son Opie about how to handle a schoolyard bully. Sheriff Taylor listened and advised with a fatherly patience only possible in a 1960s family sitcom. Doug watched as Sheriff Taylor put a hand on his son’s shoulder and lovingly calmed his fears. It was a scene that Doug needed to see. His second daughter had been born on the previous day. She was born with Down’s syndrome, and Doug’s mind and heart were swirling with fears that he didn’t know how to handle. Doug’s wife, Lynn had cried when the doctors came into the room to tell them that their newborn daughter was diagnosed with a developmental disability. Like the day of any baby’s birth, their hospital room was a revolving door of friends coming to see them. But unlike the birth of their first daughter, the mood in the room was restrained. People thought carefully about their words before saying them. At one point a friend walked up to Doug and wrapped his arms around him while he wept. “A lot changed when Brenna was born,” says Doug. “Fourteen years ago I saw myself becoming a leader in the field of addiction medicine.” Doug chose to study addiction medicine after growing up in a broken home marked by instability, mental illness, and drug and alcohol abuse. He saw himself as an inventor of programs to help people change the destructive habits of their lives. Today, Doug’s commitment to medicine plays second fiddle to the passion that was born to him on that day fourteen years ago. “God sets my agenda,” says Doug. It has turned out different from what he imagined. Last summer, on a clear blue sky afternoon in Oceanside, Doug heard the announcer’s voice over a loudspeaker. The voice asked the riders to begin assembling their teams at the amphitheater. More than 300 spandex-clad riders with their helmets and bikes began to move away from their cars and campers toward the ocean where they would begin the race. Doug looked around at the scene. It was the culmination of more than a year’s worth of preparation – early morning bike rides, late night team meetings, fundraising, and route-planning. Other cyclists were saying goodbye to their families. Lynn stood next to him. He grabbed her, hugged her, and said into her ear, “Look at where we are. Look at where our little girl has brought us. Can you believe it?” Doug, his wife, and their older daughter Lauren took it all in. “It was a moment that I didn’t want to end,” he says. Along with seven other riders and a support crew, Doug was about to begin a 3,000 mile bicycle ride across the breadth of the U.S. He was doing it to support his daughter’s special education program. He was doing it as an advocate for special needs children. He was doing it because it was on God’s agenda. On the day his daughter was born, in the midst of awkward conversations and guilty sadness, Doug remembers that a friend looked him directly in the eye and said, “Congratulations on the birth of your daughter.” That simple but bold statement bolstered his spirit and reminded him of what was important on that day. Doug’s daughter is not like most children. Nevertheless, like every child she brings joy and frustration; she is a source of pride and disappointment; and she has taken Doug from one ocean to another in search of God’s purpose for his life.
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