Beware: reading World Race blogs is dangerous. It might change your life. It certainly did mine.
One afternoon in October, 2012, as I sat in my host mom’s apartment in Montpellier, France, browsing my emails, my eye caught on an article in Elon University’s weekly newsletter. “Alumna embarks on yearlong international missions trip,” the title read. I clicked it to read the article, which turned out to be a grand total of five sentences. At the end it linked to the graduate’s World Race blog, and I went to see her most recent post. I read that post, and then I read all her posts, and then I read all the posts on all her team members’ blogs, and then I was hooked.
Over the course of the next several months, I devoured World Race blogs like a starving child. The stories gripped me, fascinated me, scared me, confused me. I was a Christian, had long considered myself to be one, but these people lived their faith in a way I’d never seen before–and in response, God was apparent in their lives in a way I’d never seen before. Stories of lives changed, of people transformed, of healings, of God on the move in awe-inspiring ways. I consumed blogs voraciously, wondering what in the world set these World Racers’ faith apart from mine.
My confusion sent me running back into Scripture as I begged God to show himself to be the same in my life as he was in theirs. To make a long story short, World Race blogs became one catalyst God used in a series of events and circumstances to radically transform the way I approached the Christian faith. By the time I returned to Elon for the spring semester, I was a different person than I was when I stepped onto the plane in August to study abroad. My understanding of God and my desires for my life had completely shifted.
Before I left, my plan for my life was definitively established: become an editor of young adult novels in a publishing company. I hoped and prayed that God would bless my efforts to pursue that goal. But as God used the World Race to reveal himself to me, I realized that I would much rather follow him wherever he led me, whether that took me to the publishing world or not–and I also realized that I really, really, really wanted to go on the World Race.
This blog is the story of a journey that started that October, or long before, when Christ chose to pursue me. I invite you, dear friends, family and internet stalkers (I know you’re out there), to follow along as he continues his work to bring me to the Race and beyond. But consider this fair warning that the journey–or rather, God–just might change you as much as it’s changing me. My prayer for you is that he does.
