You know the rest… “You never know what you’re gunna get”. Signing up for the World Race, your expectations are completely different than what your Race turns out to be. I’m not quite sure what I expected going into it, but I’ve done a lot of things I never thought would happen, and grown in ways I never thought I would. If you are considering signing up for the Race, or are curious about what my life was like the past 9 months… here ya go.
You expect for an awesome ministry. You think that you’re working at an activities center where you’ll get to be kind of a camp counsellor to different groups coming in. It turns out… there’s no groups. Your job for the next 3 months is to whitewash walls, pull the same weeds over and over again, and to scoop pig poop.
You expect for your team to be a solid family forever, but things happen that tear you apart, and you learn from it. You expect to feel like you’re on top of the world, living the best life. But sometimes you feel alone, sometimes you struggle with things you didn’t know were there.
You expect that you will immediately grow closer to the Lord, but it takes effort and sometimes you don’t give it that. You expect to never be bored, but you have more free time than you’ve ever had in your life. You expect that this country will be the best and your favorite, but the next one comes and knocks your socks off even more. You expect to have a nice peaceful vacation, but even that isn’t what you think it will be like… you might end up getting stranded on the boarder of Greece. You expect, you expect, you expect…
Sometimes all the shattered expectations can rain on your parade. You can choose to pout, or you can choose to put your rain boots on and splash around in the puddles. The puddle splashing became my favorite part. I had to learn how to make the best of every situation. I had to learn how to work hard when my ministry wasn’t “real ministry”. I had to learn how to cope when I feel like everything was falling apart. I had to learn how to pursue the Lord when things were hard. I had to learn new ways to spend my free time instead of just movie watching. I had to learn how to conquer the shame that came from feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. All these lessons come from things that I never saw coming. All these lessons are things that I could not have learned if I stayed at home.
Hearing about someone else’s Race does not prepare you for your own. It’s a whole different box of chocolates. Each month full of it’s own surprises and disappointments. So many things unexpected, good and bad. Put there by God to help you grow into the best you, and to learn the things He needs you to learn. Among all the unexpected, and all the puddle stomping, I wasn’t sure if I grew or changed; but sitting here on my bed back at home, I know I did. Home just feels different, not because it’s changed, but because I have. And I thank God for that. I changed in ways that I didn’t even know I could, or needed to.
Through all the wonderfully unexpected and the dreadfully unexpected, there is one thing that I love most that every World Race will hold. It’s a journey. From month one to month nine (or eleven) you look back and realize how far you’ve come. You look at the squad full of people who were once strangers, and now call them family. You’ve conquered once unfamiliar cultures and now you fit right in (kinda). You look back at the start and say “ wow I never thought this would happen.” The joys of month 6 could have never come if it wasn’t for the low moments of month 2. The puzzle pieces will begin to fit together, and at the end you have a beautiful picture of the Lord’s work in your life, and you realize… God knows what He’s doing. And it’s all because you said yes to the Lord. All because you decided to walk through the open door, and embrace the unexpected journey.
