A week remains in month seven of the world race in Bulgaria. My team has Unsung Heroes this month, meaning that we retained the opportunity to mobilize around the country a bit. We started, along with the whole of U squad, in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. After spending the first three-eighths of the month there, we transported down to Plovdiv. After a week in Plovdiv, we travelled to Varna, along the Black Sea. We are still here in Varna until tomorrow, when we will travel to our last stop in nearby Razgrad.
While Unsung Heroes intrinsically gives us the unique and awesome opportunity to connect with several ministries and people, it also affords ample time in our daily lives. I decided to use this time for reflection. Reflection on who I was before the race, who I am now, who I am still becoming, and who I want to be. As I’ve been told, it can be rather difficult to accurately notice the change in ourselves. That an outside perspective can prove helpful when assessing oneself. I, for one, agree.
In Japan, I explained how I felt that I didn’t necessarily belong on the World Race. I discerned that, from a utilitarian standpoint, I was more applicable back home. My efficiency, I perceived, appeared to be at a higher standard than what it was on the race. I told of how in Malaysia and Japan, I rationalized this idea; that I wasn’t performing my assigned task in as efficient or useful manner as what I was my job back in Wisconsin. I began comparing myself, negatively, to others on my squad and in my team, question my motives for first coming on the World Race, and deemphasize and downplay any part of my team’s ministry that I had partaken in since starting out in China. I knew that I had been changing, yes, but again I softened my growth; that beyond overcoming my timidness to pray audibly and reservedness in speaking aloud, I was still the same Jake. I devalued my growth down to nothing but a few superficial alterations – without opening my eyes to what God has done in my heart, my mind, and my soul.
I then began to listen as others, outside perspectives, spoke of the cultivation they had seen God work in me; not just surface development, but of deeper things, such as spiritual progression, compassion, and vulnerability. This became a staple fraction of time in which my mind was opened to the works of God that I had previously overlooked.
Fast foward to Bulgaria. With the extra time I’ve been afforded, I’ve spent a solid amount of it in reflection. I’ve come to realize that more has changed about me than the length of my hair, which, by the way, is definitely the longest it has ever been (and has required 5 times more maintainance than ever before). With God revealing to me ways He has cultivated me, along with ways He still desires to, I am both excited and slightly timid. Change is rarely easy. But when it’s done to bring glory to God and build upon our relationship with Him, it’s labor never in vain.
Prior to the race, my mindset was much more similar to the typical teenager’s than what I’d wished it was. I’ve realized this because, ironically, I thought that I wasn’t like your typical teenager: I thought I was mature, full of wisdom, and had this whole life thing basically figured out. Even though it was never a forefront intention that I had thought about, I had an underlying smug assumption that the others on my squad were going to learn from me. That I was going to have the advice, that even in my youthfulness I was the man with the plan, and that I’d be the ultra-motivated one when everyone else was depleted because I had just gotten done working a roughneck, manual labor job and owned a mink farm on top that. Underneath what honorable intentions I had, there was this sense of pride, lurking in the shadows. I needed a dose of humility. Even though I knew and admitted that I wasn’t at all travelled, my ignorance in travel led me to think my worldview was as objective as everyone else. Again, I needed to realize the scope of what going to many different cultures, without ever experiencing a different one, was going to be. On top of this, while I verbally agreed (and in my head semi-agreed) to have a willingness to change, I again did not have a complete comprehension of what that actually meant. That it mean a breakdown of my current self in order that God may mold me into who He desires me to be.
From the naive perspective of God, the world, and of myself that I held prior to the race, I have exponentionally grown. For the first six months, I was blinded to this change; I was unable to discern it past the more obvious, superficial revisions. But through meditation, the mask has begun to uncover my eyes. I cannot believe the work God has done in my life through the experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve met, and the love that has been so graciously given to me. So, instead of keeping my thoughts in my brain, I’d like to share some of the ways God has reformed myself.
