With the ending of my World Race journey coming quickly I have been really reflective this past month on my experiences on this past year. I can hardly believe the opportunity I have had to be apart of The World Race. I could tell you all about all of the wonderful things that have happened this year and how it was a year full of joy, but that isn’t what I am wanting to share. While it did contain a lot of wonderful, joyful moments it, also, has been one of the hardest things I have done.
“I don’t get home sick,” was a lie straight from the pit of hell I believed walking into being away from home for 11 months.
“Community can’t be that hard,” was also another lie that I seemed to believe going into this thing.
I could list lie after lie I believed about The World Race and what this year was going to look like, but I never believed for a second it would be as hard as it has been. Countless days have went by this year that I have wanted to go home or that I have wanted for things to just be normal for once. I assumed that with the Lord calling me to go on The World Race that I would have a year full of joy and not a year where things were hard as hell. That isn’t what the Lord has promised us though. He hasn’t promised for things to always be bright rays of sunshine and rainbows, but instead promises to never leave us.
Month one through month eight where very hard months. I enjoyed them, but I also struggled a lot during those month. The question of “how am I going to end this once and a lifetime experience full of anger and frustration?” rattled around in my brain for quite some time. While I learned so much during those months my soul was longing for restoration and for joy. This prayer was answered in ways I never expected.
Team changes happened month nine and the joy I instantly felt was what I had been longing for so deeply month one through month eight. Laughter came and not just for me, but for my other five teammates as well. The joy that came, was at the exact time that each of us were longing for. Through the trials this year contained, the Lord provided right at the last moment three months to be filled with joy.
Our squad mentor, Travis, recently shared with our squad about how we end a season of our life, could very well dictate how we go into the next season of life that God has for us. I believe that to be true. I believe that even though this year didn’t look anything like I had planned for it to look like, that the joy I have been given for the last three months of The World Race are for me to take and enter into the next season of life with.
Looking back now going into month eleven I am so glad I stuck it out. I am glad I didn’t buy the plane ticket I so badly wanted to buy. I am glad that, even if it has been just for these three months, that I have set my focus on community and allowed community to pour into me. More than anything I am so glad that I filled out that application two years ago and said “yes” to the call God has placed on my life. No matter how hard it may seem to get, in life or on The World Race, stick it out. The Lord has joy that is unending on the other side of it all.
