Some of you may or may not know that when you get accepted for the World Race you sign a contract agreeing to certain rules and restriction from the time that you get accepted to the time that you return to America; unless, you are already in a serious relationship. And when I applied I was dating my girlfriend Molly Elizabeth Fritz. One of my first thoughts about the whole situation is that I didn’t want to hold her back and be a burden over her 2nd year of college, so her and me talked about it one night. We both had the same thought about holding the other one back. After a while we agreed to talk about it closer to when I launched. When launch came around we talked about it again and we both decided that we didn’t want to break up and that we wanted to fight for each other and for our relationship.
Having a girlfriend on the race has been a blessing and a curse, mainly a curse. My squad has had some issues with romantic relationships among people on the squad, so since I was in a relationship I didn’t have to worry about any of that. On the other hand, there would be days were all I wanted to do is be home with Molly and just be with her. My love languages are heavily physical touch and quality time; the two that you cant really fill while you are apart. That sucks so much you have no idea. It has challenged me to find other ways to love her and show her that I love her.
I would not being doing this unless I saw a long future with Molly. If I didn’t plan on marrying her and spending the rest of my life with her then I would not have fought this hard. If you are considering doing the race while you are dating someone, you need to really spend some time with the Lord and asking what he wants you do.
Dating and the world race are a tough mix for sure. Its nothing that Adventures in Missions did or has done, just dating someone on the other side of the world for almost a year is borderline crazy. So… I guess I’m crazy, and so is she.
You have no idea how hard it is to be literally on the opposite side of the world from the love of your life. And some days that fact gets to you and it is all that you can think about, its what consumes your thoughts, and all you want is to be there with him/her again. One thing that my mom told me before I left is “God gives us enough strength to get through everyday, even when it seems like he didn’t.”
God has used this year apart from Molly to grow our relationship in such a beautiful way! When you spend a lot of time with a person it is easy to depend on physical attraction to fuel the relationship. But when you can’t be with your significant other you cant use that fuel. It makes you really look at the relationship and makes you see if that physical attraction is the only thing that is keeping the relationship above water. Being apart from Molly has made me love so much more about her!
When God calls you to something you go when he wants to not when you want to. Words can’t describe how much I didn’t want to leave Molly, but you have listen to God instead of your own selfish desires.
People talk about the hardest part about missions is that you can never really be home after you were on the mission field because your heart is somewhere else in the world. I have been living that truth since day 1 of launch.
Most relationships will never have to experience something like this. My parents told me that in their entire relationship they have never spent this much time apart. And I am looking forward to hearing people complain about how hard it is for them not to see their significant other for a week , because I’m just going to nod my head and say, “I know how hard it is, believe me”
Most relationships now have an unhealthy dependence on each other, and if you think that your relationship is suffering from this then you should go on the race. The World Race makes you be independent from your significant other. You don’t really have a choice. It just happens because you spend some much time away from him/her that it just happens.
I have talked so much about how tough it is, but I have been seeing the fruit from being apart from Molly in our relationship. The race has added so much more depth to our relationship, and the race is a pressure cooker in so many ways. One of those ways is a romantic relationship back at the states, but sometimes pressure is what you need to grow.
I honestly don’t know how to explain how it is dating on the race. I just would tell someone that is thinking about going on the race while in a serious relationship, prepare to fight and to fight hard. The World Race puts so much pressure on your relationship, imagine long distance dating only you talk about once a week, if that, and you wont be able to see them in almost a year. If you really want your relationship to succeed and survive the race you and your partner are going to have to fight so freaking hard. There will be weeks/months that you wont have Wi-Fi so you cant talk to him/her. You have to know that the person at home wont give up when it gets hard, and they have to know that just because you cant talk to them doesn’t mean that you aren’t fighting for the relationship.
I will say that days when you get to talk to your SO is so incredibly sweet! Throughout the race you are going to look at a lot and I mean A LOT of pictures, but at some point you are going to get to where pictures just don’t cut it anymore. Talking to the person is the best way to fill that void.
I honestly don’t know how to explain how long 11 months actually is, you just have to find out for yourself.
One thing that you have to understand before going on the race while in a serious relationship or really in a relationship, is that your significant other is His before he/she is ever yours.
Also Facetime is the best thing in the world when you have strong wifi!
Jack Baker
