My career path has been set for a while now – I am going to be a teacher. Almost every major life decision has been in line with this trajectory for the last 6+ years of my life.
So why I am doing this instead? Why am I putting aside the livelihood I’ve worked towards so hard, for so long? Why am I throwing away all the comforts and privileges I’ve had my whole life to live out of a backpack for 11 months in unfamiliar, uncomfortable places, doing work that I have to raise money to pay for?
Before I answer that question, I want to share a short story from my life. Growing up, I never really went anywhere, and as a result, my world was extremely small. I didn’t know there was a freeway in my town until age 11, and up to that point, I had never traveled more than 100 miles away from my place of birth. Once a year I would make the trek to San Francisco to take in a Giants game, and that seemed like it was a million miles away. I loved it. I didn’t make it out of Northern California until I was 13, when I went on a church trip to the LA area. I loved that too. It wouldn’t be until I was 19 that I left the state of California. When we crossed into Nevada, my friend blasted the song “Oh My God” by the band Kaiser Chiefs, in which the chorus exclaims, “Oh my God I can’t believe it, I’ve never been this far away from home!” Although intended as a joke, honestly there wasn’t a better way to describe how I felt at that moment. Crossing that imaginary line in the desert felt like I had been blessed with some level of freedom, and I prayed to my God in thanksgiving for it. Soon thereafter I left home for college, and have lived in multiple places since then. It has been in those places that I’ve realized my love for people and serving that I think had always been within me, but took seeing some of the rest of the world to discover.
However, if I am being real, this love for people and service that I’m describing has been hidden from many of the people I have come to love. You see, in the years where I never ventured outside of home, I built a fortress around myself that kept people from getting to know me too well, mostly because of fear. Instead of spending my time loving people, I spent it keeping people from penetrating my armor, which was composed of increasingly-more elaborate lies about my life. This was not only exhausting, but life-sucking. The process of breaking down these walls began when I got saved, as God reveled to me that I was enough, and I could make it in this world because he was with me. This has been a long, slow process, but I can safely say that I am not that scared little boy any more. I still have a long ways to go, as my natural instinct is still to keep people at arms length, but Christ continues to heal me of this more and more every day. This brings me to my decision to go on the World Race.
So why am I going? In short, I’m going because I know a love that has saved me from myself, and continues to do so. A love that has transformed my life and opened my eyes to expose the person I truly am. I refuse to be afraid of the world anymore. I refuse to believe the lies that keep me from loving and serving people, when I so strongly desire to do so. I want to live a life worthy of the calling I have received, and although I may be bound to fall short, I want to share this life with people. I want to share this life with people here in the states that can come alongside me as partners in this crazy endeavor that I am about to embark upon, and earnestly give them the love that has been placed within me. I want to share this life and this love through service to the people I will encounter in each of the 11 countries I will be so fortunate to set foot in. I want to do this to make up for the time I have lost refusing to love people, but more importantly I want to do this in the hopes that I may be used as a vessel to show people this transformative love. I want people to see the love that brings hope into hopeless circumstances, many of which I couldn’t possibly relate to in mere words. I am going, because I want the rest of my life to be a testament to just how powerful and life-changing this love can be, and that life starts now.
