I applied for the race last October after getting back from a backpacking trip through Europe. So for almost a year before leaving I had time to develop a TON of expectations. Things I knew without a shadow of a doubt: I love to travel anywhere and am super flexible with doing anything. Leading a team will be easy because God has used me to lead well in the past. My struggles at home will disappear because I will be halfway across the world doing missions 24-7. These are the reasons I thought that I was perfect for the race and the race was perfect for me.
All these assumptions/expectations have been TERRIBLY false.
Although my teammate Liz asked me “What don’t you enjoy doing?” today after I stated how much I genuinely enjoyed pulling weeds for hours, there are things and places I have not enjoyed. There have even been times I have wished I was anywhere than where I was at that moment.
Being a leader is tough. There are so many expectations that I and my team puts on me that I have just begun to realize. I am learning that the best way to lead is through falling on my face every morning before the Lord, saying “I can’t do this on my own.” I want to be so in tune and focused on the Lord that my team is always seeing the back of my head because my eyes are on Him and Him alone.
My struggles at home have followed me to Africa. Satan works the same way here as he does everywhere. He hopes to steal, kill, and destroy the joy we find in Christ. I am thankful that through community my struggles appear on the surface with no way of hiding them. But, unlike at home, I have five amazing people to battle these struggles with. They will fight for and with me.
God is so good in His perfect timing. He knows exactly what we need right when we need it. He knew I needed my friend Amie this month. She is amazing! Her team J159 and my team are doing ministry together and loving it! God knew that He would be teaching us similar things this month and brought us together, which I am so thankful for.
Amie and I have been studying Song of Solomon every day this month. We both struggle with keeping our eyes fixed on the Creator, instead of on His creations. God brought us both to South Africa to fall madly in love with Him, to experience the true pursuit of our hearts by the lover of our souls. The Lord continues to meet us and blow our minds with every conversation.
As I reflect on the past two weeks God keeps slapping me in the face like a horrible haircut. I’ve never had a chilly bowl cut but I have had a haircut that changed my life forever.
I was a junior in high school and I was waiting for my mom to get her hair cut at this beauty store called Ulta. As I flipped through a hairstyle magazine I loved this cute, above the shoulder, cropped cut and bravely decided I just had to have it. I told my mom and she was quite hesitant, but my 16-year-old self thought she didn’t know what she was talking about. When the hairstylist finished he said “Well, your hair is kind of thick for this kind of cut” as he tried combing it 5 different ways. All I could think was ‘ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?! Why didn’t you tell me that before cutting it!?!?! YOU ARE THE PROFESSIONAL!!!’. The whole way home I told myself it wasn’t that bad, but oh how the tears flowed when I got home. For months my friends called me horrible nicknames that I’d rather not put in writing and I tried to avoid as many pictures as possible.
It was a sad couple months in which I didn’t feel great about myself, but after a couple months I liked the way it grew it and went past my shoulders. Lately I have felt completely rocked by what God has been teaching me, but it’s been in a way that is hard and uncomfortable. As I let the lessons sink into my heart and I realize more that what He’s showing me is out of love I begin to appreciate how He is molding and shaping my heart, like a bad haircut that grows on you. At first you think ‘What have I done!?!’ but then you become accustomed to the change and eventually you like the new you.
I had great expectations for that haircut. I thought it would be ‘that haircut’… you know the one that frames your face that perfect way, when the compliments never end. The result did not match my expectation whatsoever. I expected that I was ‘just the person’ for a trip like this, and I am… for different reasons than I thought. Instead of having it all together like I thought I did, I am realizing I have so much to learn and so much growing to do. I feel that I have barely scratched the surface of understanding and experiencing all that God has for me. And that’s what this year is about. I have been humbled, pushed, prodded, encouraged, accepted, loved passionately, and I haven’t even finished month two. These things are what the race is for and I am ‘just the person’ to experience it, because I have so far to go before I step into the humble, servant-hearted, BOLD shoes that God created for me.
Change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Very few people wish for change. We love what we know and what is comfortable. But what I’m learning is that God doesn’t use what we know and what is comfortable to change the world. He uses people who make themselves ready and available.
So Lord, here I am, send me, chilly bowl haircut and all.
