This morning I woke up in my sleeping bag to the sound of dogs barking on rooftops and children chanting at the school across the street. When I wrote this, there was Spanish worship music playing from the radio in Filomena’s kitchen and bass thumping from Rihanna’s “Work” somewhere outside the house, and I was in my bed for the month, three thin foam mattresses stacked together and covered with a blanket.
If you had asked me at 18 what my life would look like now, I would have told you that I was just finishing undergrad at UT with degrees in Journalism and English; I would be starting seminary in the fall at Duke, or maybe interning at the Wesley for a year before I went off to learn how to preach and pastor. I was so sure.
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The plan I had for my life was big and wonderful, and I thought it was God’s- and probably it was, and I just chose another one, because there never is just one plan for us that we have to choose in order to get this thing called life right.
Instead of that big, grand plan, I’m in Peru, living with a family of three and stuttering over a language I swore I would never need.
Instead of journalism, I studied religion and all the ways it shapes the world, and it lit something up inside of me. Instead of applying to seminary, I applied to the World Race.
I’ve spent the last ten months traveling the world with my home on my back and my heart in my hands. I’ve laughed harder than I’ve ever laughed before, and I’ve cried harder, too. This journey has been full of joy and brokenness. Every other day, I’ve wondered if this was the right choice, if I’m actually making a difference, if all this risk was worth it. On the other days, I know it was.
But the Race isn’t forever. I knew it going in, and I was still holding on to some of that grand plan I’d started college with. I had a tab in my bookmarks bar marked “grad school” full of links to Methodist seminary websites.
Over the last ten months, that plan slowly fell apart until in South Africa, I sat down and realized that I had nothing left.
No clear way forward.
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Every month, it seems like, there has been a moment where I’ve wondered- is this where I should go? This month it was when two leaders of a church in a mountain village asked why we take communion. It was when I stood in a room full of Peruvians and cheered with them as they watched Peru score a goal to win over Brazil for the first time ever. But every month, I could also feel the complete lack of a plan like a gap in a tapestry. I was grasping for the next step, trying to pick up a loose thread.
One night in Colombia, when I couldn’t sleep, I applied to the Episcopal Service Corps at two in the morning. It felt like cheating on my United Methodist upbringing, but the application asked questions that lit something up inside me the way religious studies had, the way good books and liturgy do.
Four Skype interviews and three job offers on three different coasts later, I still wasn’t sure. The ESC is a year-long service program, where interns live in community and work with non-profit organizations for 35 hours a week. I wouldn’t know which non-profit I would work with until I committed to a city. It’s not a career, and after this year of traveling the world, it feels like I should be setting down roots somewhere- “making something of myself,” following the American dream.
But there I was, praying and feeling the Lord saying yes. Yes, you can make this choice. Yes, you could be happy here. Yes, I will be with you wherever you go.
So about three weeks ago, I sent the director of the Seattle ESC program an email: I’m very excited about the Seattle program. I would love to accept.
This time next year, I will wake up in an apartment that I’ll share with the other interns, and I’ll get ready for work. I’ll probably still be listening to Rihanna. I’ll be in a city I’ve never been to, with people I’ve never met, and somehow that comforts me, because it’s not so different from what I’m doing right now.
I’m going to miss the Race so much. I didn’t think I would say that, even yesterday. But it’s true. Today is one of the days where I remember how amazing this thing is that I get to do, how the Race also lights me up.
So this is what’s up next: leaving the plan behind. Packing my stuff to move across the country, and meeting four new friends. But first, it’s finishing strong. It’s keeping my hands and heart open and remembering every second of the rest of this Race.
