Last month I painted a picture for my team and my squad leaders of how I was feeling. I said “You know when you take swimming lessons and you’re sitting on the ledge of the pool when the instructor tells you to swim out to them…” You launch off and start paddling away. Just to test you the instructor starts backing up. Eventually you say to yourself, “OK, we’re going a lot farther than I thought.” You get a little tired and you can’t wait for the comfort of the finish line.
I’ve been charging into lots of things for ten months now. The Lord has done amazing big things in me and I’m grateful for the change. I’m also tired. For a long time I’ve been looking at who I am and who I was and who I am called to be; and introspection is hard. Love is hard. Team is hard.
Home sounds great for a lot of reasons: air-conditioning, familiar food, English-speakers everywhere, couches. And then there’s this: the World Race is just as much about what comes after it as what happens during it. Yeah the eleven countries in eleven months was always exciting. I expected God to do amazing things on the field and he has. But from the moment I applied for this thing I knew it would be part of my ongoing preparation for the life to which God has called me.
So I sit at the border of American reentry and I am pretty darn anxious to see what will happen in the weeks, months and years following the Race. In fact, sometimes I feel so anxious that I’m ready to walk up to the border, stare the guard in the face, tell him to put down his huge gun and open that silly gate right now.
A few months ago I was saying this about going home: “I just believe that God will give me the answers when I need them, and probably not before.” As we have gotten closer to the end of the Race, however, possibilities have grown and with them my anxiety.
A couple weeks ago I sent an email to my parents, basically to get my thoughts into words and to give them a brief snippet of how I was feeling. I started making some bolds statements. We had been told by some of our leaders that we needed a plan for going home, maintaining full knowledge that God could very well wreck that plan as soon as we get there. So I started sorting out the possibilities. I started talking about what my long-term calling is and how that will shape my first several months at home.
And then my dad got back to me. He said, “Well that all sounds great, son. We’re happy that you’re thinking about the future, but we were kind of expecting that you would need some time to rest when you get home.” He said they figured it would be hard for me to readjust to life back at home and I would need to focus on that for a while. They were pretty calm that all the other stuff would work itself out.
That was just the response I needed.
I’ve heard before that stress and anxiety about the future comes when we just don’t think God will take care of it all. When we lose faith that he is in control and his plan will prevail. I was able to sit at the Honduran/Nicaraguan border calmly for six hours, because we had been in those sorts of situations before and I had seen God come true. I have not many times stared into the expanse of my future with no idea where I was going or how to get there. And was beginning to be unsure that God would take care of it.
My parents have been walking with the Lord much longer than I have. They have seen him come through again and again. And their counsel was just what I needed. They said, “God has directed our lives for his good before and he will do the same for you. There is no need to worry about what you will do next, because the Lord has a plan and it will prevail.” So they reminded me of what I already knew. The conviction of their experience reignited the assurance I still know best intellectually.
And I feel much better equipped in faith for the joy of God’s latest waiting game. I wait to cross into a whole new land. A land of unbelievable possibility and the miracles of the Lord, and my God looks down at me and says, “You think you know what’s coming? Watch this…”
