One of the cool parts of this blog is the nifty little title that is positioned up at the top… front and center. To the left of my picture. Above my name. And to the right of The World Race logo…. there it is… it reads: “Life Obedient.”
It didn’t always say that. When I first started this blog (in May of ’07- wow!), they encouraged us racers to choose a title of personal significance; something that would be a sort-of theme for the year. Something that ties all our blogs together. The one I chose I actually ended up sticking with me for the whole year… Learning as I Go. It was a fitting theme for me during the World Race. It had personal significance and tied all of my blogs together. The World Race was a lot… a LOT… A LOT of learning! In a good way of course. But I chose the theme mainly because I knew going into the Race that I wasn’t prepared. I knew I had a lot of growing and learning to do. And so “Learning as I Go” was birthed.
And so as I begin the next chapter of my life, I felt it fitting to choose a new theme… not that I am done learning (I’ll never be done with that!) …but I just felt that it was time. And this new theme, Life Obedient, actually stemmed from the old one. The first theme was about learning… so what did I learn? What was one of the main (though there were many) things that I learned while on the race?
Obedience.
When my team was traveling into Mozambique from South Africa, it involved a four day road trip with 6-9 people, a five-seater SUV, and an enclosed truck bed filled with supplies, daypacks, and a mattress pad. I believe it was day one that we first got lost. The road split, and we weren’t sure which was the right way… so with a little help/directions from the locals, we decided to go down the first road. Hours and hours later we were still on this road. It happened to be a pretty crappy road too. It was more potholes than it was road, and so the car weaved back and forth on the torn up dirt road at a very low speed, with us bouncing up and down in the car, and in the truck bed. We chose the wrong direction. The other way was more direct, and probably less potholes.
I want my life to be lived on the other road. I want to be listening closely enough to know which was is the right way. When I come to decisions, which basically are forks in the road of life… I want to go down the right road. I know that life inevitably brings struggles and pain, and that God uses these times to stretch us and build our character. But I also know that a lot of time we make decisions that cause us more struggles and extra pain… hard times that could be avoided if we were listening. If we were being obedient.
And that’s what this blog is about. That’s what my life is about. And it’s starting with me going to Manila. Because that’s the fork that was placed in front of me… and I listened carefully and know without a doubt in my mind, that the right road, the road of obedience, is Manila. And Lord willing, this road will be a bit smoother than the pothole-ridden road in Mozambique.
“I know, O LORD, that a man’s life is not his own;
it is not for man to direct his steps.”
it is not for man to direct his steps.”
Jeremiah 10:23
