Since March 2020, Rich Dixon has been writing here every Wednesday. It was his way to help me out as my hospital work got intense. He’s taking today off. The floor underneath us in the photo is being refinished and he’s offline for a bit.

I decided to run this post I wrote a few years ago about Rich and Becky. They were at our house, we’ve been to theirs. I’m grateful for the ways that connections made online can last. And change your life.

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Rich and Becky Dixon are friends. They are the kind of friends that you first meet in the comment box and eventually end up in your living room. Along the way, they move into your heart.

If you ever look at the comments here, you have seen Rich a couple times a week, taking my thoughts, summarizing them in a couple words, then adding a phrase or two that take you and me much further down the road with Jesus.

During the fall of 2011, Rich rode his handcycle the length of the Mississippi River. Along the way, he and Becky and their dog Monte raised $60,000 for Convoy of Hope.

Today (I mean a decade ago), Rich receives the first shipment of the book he wrote about that trip, and we get a glimpse of what he was thinking about during those 1500 miles of riding. He talks about the time he pushed too far in southern Illinois. He wrestles with the difference between planning and preparing. He reveals his struggles to understand why people act as they do, and confesses his own unwarranted assumptions. He talks directly about his struggle when he hears what “people like you” can teach “people like us.”

His writing reflects the clear prose from someone trained by teaching math to middle schoolers, patient, precise, structured. The ideas reflect the transparency of someone regularly opening his motives and direction to God and to trusted counsel.

Rich and Becky’s story perfectly captures the wandering journey of people who follow Jesus. We set out on a journey of obedience. We think we know where it’s going. We’re constantly surprised by the ways God works through us, the way people work on and for us, and the strength we find in us.

Rich is one of the people regularly working on me.

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Rich’s Ride: Hope changes what’s possible is available at richsride.org. So is his second book, Relentless Grace.