i have been trying to verbalize what the last few days have been to me. so many ups and so many downs. saying goodbye to west michigan was hard. i have worked through a lot of my "stuff" there. my life for the last 5 years has been there. my friends that are closest to my heart live there. saying goodbye to the people and places that have held my heart captive and so dear was so hard for me to let go.
as i was having a conversation with one of my amazing squadmates, Chase (who you should totally stalk his blog www.chaseglantz.theworldrace.org) , he passed on some amazing wisdom that had been passed to him.
"He just said, "Chase, life is a series of trade offs. What you learn here, you will take with you forever. You may not be working your way up the corporate ladder, but you are trusting God with this." I've been stuggling with that sense and with the race. Amanda, this is your trade off. The question is: Do you believe this will be worth it?"
my response to him simply was : "absolutely."
because even in this transition time, these changing seasons, these trade offs… i know that this is EXACTLY where God wants me. i know that this is exactly what my i need to be doing in my life. as much as i loved my life in west michigan, i had a longing for something more. a desire to to bigger things, greater things. that requires a trade off. so here i sit, in the bedroom that has been claimed as mine since i was twelve years old and we were looking at the floorplan before our house was even built. where my present life, meets my past in a strange embrace.
i have been more blessed and more anxious in the past few days than in a long time. but now i am home. now i am even more ready to prep for this race.
so as my squad mates and i continue our preparation for this amazing journey please pray for us. we are being hammered in every direction by sickness and by discouragement. our first financial goal is coming up in less than a month. pray for our finances. i will have a blog about how my fundraising is going within the next few days. so stay tuned.
much love,
A
