Mercy Rides

Lord have mercy. It’s one of my favorite prayers. Read on as Katie Kelley helps us learn to pray it.

Elisa

Mercy Rides

By Katie M. Kelley

The Peloton bike had been sitting in my basement for seven months, and I had probably used it a grand total of seven times. We all know the story well: Middle-aged mother determines she is only one expensive piece of workout equipment away from getting back to her pre-baby weight, convinces her husband to spend the money, and, in a flurry of fleeting motivation, uses said equipment three days in a row and about once every six weeks thereafter.

The bike had become little more than an excellent place to hang sweatshirts by the hood when I didn’t want to walk them all the way upstairs.

But the week after my husband left abruptly for four months to commit to an addiction recovery program, the bike became something else.

A new sensation came over me in those first lonely and vulnerable days of my husband’s absence. Call it a feeling, a desire, a spark buried deep inside me from my years as a college athlete that had gone dark in the throes of motherhood and the general full-plate nature of life. Whatever it was, it began to flicker again. The spark was there.

This sudden desire to sweat as if my life depended on it made little sense. I was solo-parenting six children: a heartbroken nine-year-old who woke up on her birthday to the news that her dad was going to be gone for some time, a sweet yet unpredictable and nonverbal seven-year-old, a confused six-year-old, two three-year-old toddlers, and a nursing ten-month-old baby.

And I was processing my own grief and confusion in the aftermath of the first “finding out” of the depths of my husband’s addictions. This is not exactly the season one would expect the Lord to help me fall in love with tough workouts. And yet, standing there in the kitchen one afternoon, I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do more.

I turned my children over to the care of my favorite mother’s helper, Bluey, the Australian Blue Heeler, offered my oldest daughter the chance to pick out a treat at the grocery store if she would keep the baby away from the pedals, clicked start on a forty-five-minute bike ride, and gratefully let one of the instructors with a reputation for challenging workouts swear at me a few dozen times. For forty-five minutes, he not-so-gently told me to keep moving, keep going, stop holding back. And when I finished, I was sweaty and exhausted, and my legs were burning, but I also felt slightly different. Strong, proud.

There’s a joke amongst writers that most writers don’t really like writing, but do it largely for the feeling of having written. Well, it’s true for me and exercise, too. I like having ridden.

That day—when I desperately needed to feel something besides pain, besides anxiety, besides the hollowness that creeps into your body when you’re hurting and have no idea what the next day will bring—I had ridden. And while this is not really a helpful explanation, all I can say is that I felt so much better than I did having not ridden. So, like Forrest Gump in his running trek across America, I just felt like riding, and I kept riding.

Did the Peloton bike save my life over the course of the last few years, as trauma, loss, and betrayal challenged every part of my faith and fortitude? Of course not, that’s too dramatic.

God alone has done the keeping and the miraculous tending to my heart and mind.

But still, the bike has done something for me, and, in God’s kindness and the brilliant way he designed our minds and bodies, it has still been what I would call a miracle.

After a few weeks of consistent riding, I began to crave the movement in the same way I crave my morning coffee. I felt my best when I moved my body, like I was a more present and more alive version of myself. And it wasn’t just the physical movement; I felt more at peace, less anxious, more clear-minded. The hardest emotional six months of my life—in the aftermath of learning about addiction, solo-parenting for a season, and then trying to save a marriage—moved forward in tandem with the hardest physical work I had done in years.

My best friend Ashlee and I talked honestly about what getting better looks and feels like, what good fruit can come from really bad seasons, and why the bike has meant so much to me.

“What do you think it is about the bike?” she asked.

“You know, I think it’s the workout for sure, and the general feeling of pride exercise leaves me with. I like feeling strong . . .” I paused for a moment to search for more words, knowing the rest of my answer wasn’t so straightforward.

“But here is the other thing: Prayer has been really, really hard for me this year. It’s hard for me to get my mind quiet enough to pray, and then it’s even harder to keep that quiet mind free of so much anger. But whenever I am on the bike, even if I can’t pray, I just keep asking God for mercy. Over and over again, I ride, and I say, ‘Have mercy on my family, God. Please have mercy.’ Or, sometimes it’s just the word, I just say ‘mercy.’ I know it’s not a real prayer, but . . .” I stopped again to push through the insecurity of admitting I couldn’t pray, then I say the rest. “I guess it has kind of felt like one this year.”

Ashlee paused and we let the silence just be what it was, what it needed to be, for a moment.

Then she softly, confidently added, “It’s a real prayer, Katie.”

A few weeks later I mentioned to Ashlee the overwhelm I was feeling again and the worry that had begun to creep back in. Healing comes in waves, and I felt at a low point in the process. Within minutes, five words popped up on the screen of my phone from her: Go do a mercy ride.

A mercy ride, I smiled as I read it. And with that sentence, that name, I knew exactly why the bike has meant so much to me.

When my body and my mouth together cried mercy again and again and again, even though that was all I could seem to mutter, my brain really started to believe God would, somehow, be merciful to us.

Excerpt from Grace Will Be There: Finding God in the Life We Aren’t Ready For by Katie M. Kelley. (©2026). Published by Moody Publishers. Used with permission.

Katie M. Kelley (formerly Katie M. Blackburn) is a mother of eight in a beautiful blended family, a writer, teacher, and learner. She is a contributing writer to the Coffee + Crumbs blog as well as one of the podcast's cohosts. Her most recent book is Grace Will Be There. She is also the author Gluing the Cracks and Best Baseball Game. Her writing has appeared in Risen Motherhood, The Gospel Coalition, Well Watered Women, ERLC, MomCo, Motherly, Journeywomen, and more.