When was the last time you did something for the first time?
-Andrew Shearman
So part of the next phase of me being here on the World Race is about me learning how to lead.
I was placed into a position of leadership after two months on the race.
It was a bit intimidating leading a team that mostly consists of people with more age and more experience, along with probably more merit to lead.
But there I was leading Team Agapetos.
It has been a learning experience and I am getting better at it, but am certainly not perfect.
Now after the halfway mark of the Race, I find myself in new territory once again.
The Lord led Agapetos to go to
South Africa to work at the Refilwe Project, a wonderful place for orphans to live in real family and community settings.
Turns out that three of the four new squads were also going to go there.
So I was placed in leadership over the 27 of us.
Gulp, even more intimidating, but I knew it was only by the Lord’s leading that it was happening.
So my last few days have been quite stressful.
The weight of the teams was to fall on my shoulders.
I was overwhelmed by it as we jumped in the taxis to drive from
Swaziland to
South Africa.
But we made it.
Yet something was off, I just felt weird.
It was very difficult to pray or to really feel good about what was happening.
Fear, doubt, self condemnation were all coming against me.
“What is wrong with me?”
I thought.
I picked up a new book yesterday about two guys who rode their motorcycles around the world.
I began reading it the other day.
It begins with all of the troubles they went through to even get on the road.
It stated that if they had everything figured out, that it wouldn’t be any fun.
The trouble, the unknown, was all part of the journey.
Here is what I wrote in my journal:
If there were no chance for failure, then it wouldn’t be an adventure.
So now that I have more pressure on me than I have ever had, I look forward and say, “Lets have an adventure!”
This has already been a very difficult journey for me.
But I think I have been looking at it all wrong.
Most of my experiences in life have had a pretty safe outcome.
The World Race certainly does not have a safe outcome, but the journey has been relatively mapped out for us already.
Enough so that it has felt in my heart just a bit less than an adventure.
Sure I haven’t known where I would be next, but it still felt safe.
I guess it’s the safety that I’ve been frustrated with.
The safety has always been there growing up in upper middle class
America.
I’ve been so ready to break out of that, and now here I am.
For the first time I feel truly exposed, vulnerable.
I am out on a limb right now, unsure if it will support me.
But I think I just realized that that is the whole point of adventure.
And now that I am in this new position, with 30 people looking to me for guidance, I must look at the challenge and adventure that it is, not the burden.
Sure its tough, but if I never have an opportunity to fail, I will never truly grow.
So I will stop seeing this new phase as a burden to bear, but as a grand new adventure!
Who knows what lies ahead?
With this realization, I felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
I felt like I could breathe again.
I realized that this was exactly what I truly wanted and needed.
I’m sick of living over this safety net I’ve always had below me.
It’s the safety that has kept me blind to the adventure of life.
“Well what if it doesn’t turn out according to plan?
What happens if we get hung up?”
That’s the whole point!
The hang-ups are the journey!
Far too often we refuse to go into uncharted territory.
To use another Andrew Shearmanism, “Ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what they are meant for.”
And neither are we.
We are not made to sit idle at the dull docks, but to navigate the wild waters of life!
