Dear John,
Bro,
I love you and I mean it. I hope you feel that like you feel the base line and beat that Paul and Ringo bring in Come Together. You’ve got an epic journey ahead, Like a hobbit sized one. Man I wish I could hug your beefy red neck and tell you everything you need to know. All the dope lessons you’ll learn. But you gotta learn them, man. You man of God, you’ve gotta learn them.
I wish I could tell you to shut your trap when you opened it and let your words get the better of you. I wish I could teach you how to cultivate space, give things to the Lord, and really sit and consider your life and how wonderful it is. I wish I could tell you all the books you need to poor over while sipping tea in Nepal. I wish I could just have a beer with you and let you know how much vision God will bring you during this trip. I wish I could share with you the out-right liberation that you will feel. But I can’t do that, because it would rob me of where I am today. I learned so much through failure.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan
—————————
Thomas Edison says “the best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.”
You’re actually an introvert. Surprise!! But you don’t know it yet. You haven’t ever had the space to just process stuff. You haven’t experienced solitude. John, you excel in the quiet. Your most creative and close to God moments come from healthy silence. They come from laying in your Eno. They come from feeling the ocean breeze. They come on those chillier mornings when you have a cup of coffee in Falls Park, wearing your black pea coat, scratching your beard, ignoring texts, and watching people walk their poodles.
They come in the sauna at Sportsclub when no one else is there. They’ll come to you this month on top of that old unfinished building next to Pastor Charles House in Lira, Uganda.
You were so busy back home, and moments like that are so fleeting, that you could hardly learn to treasure them.
You worked all the time, surrounded by customers who didn’t want Gorgonzola cheese or olives in their Greek salad, and people who didn’t want Asiago croutons in their tomato soup. You worked out all the time, surrounded by girls who distracted you, and guys fitter than you that you aspired to be like.
You played way to many video games(it’s a wonder you didn’t get Carpal Tunnel), investing more time in your character in Skyrim than in things in the real world that would shape your character for the betterment of yourself and others around you.
You watched way too much Netflix, and you tried to fix people who weren’t willing to change. No wonder a war is about to come to the surface in you. How in the world could you possibly have time to deal with any logs in your own eye? You never had clear eyes in your life, partly because you thought you could see, but you were really blinded by the world. Welcome to the real world you millennial twenty something, cheers to ya!!
You haven’t learned how to do this solitude thing yet. Crap. That’s rough. 26 years of life without real solitude where you can process things with the Lord and really take account of your life and all your days and your dreams and hopes for your future. Now, guess what, You’re living in 24/7 community. Yay! Talk about a blessing. Seriously, being around the same people all day will push you into a place where you will want to be alone faster than you could say Worcestershire sauce. Actually I can’t say that at all, and I can’t think of another word, but I think that makes a decent enough illustration. You’ll crave a quiet place to get away and spend time with the Lord.
Youll also learn something beautiful on the Race. OH MY GOD I PRAISE YOU THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THE WORLD RACE IN MY LIFE!!For the last few months leading up to the flight out Atlanta, with all the stress and all the angst and all the restlessness, you almost always couldn’t go to sleep without kissing a glass of Jack and Coke. Its okay, man, I love you, and I’m not ashamed of you, because you know you weren’t living for anything but the next day. Youll learn real purpose, man. Youll learn the real reason for living.
I promise, even though you’ll have hard nights, and sleepless ones, one hundred percent of your trip you will go to sleep not needing to drink. You know why? It’s because on this trip God will use you, the pretty parts of you and the ugly parts of you, to accomplish his purposes. You will feel satisfied every time you lay down in bed, that is, when you have a bed. From Africa to central America you will feel satisfied. You’ll know that you lived for Jesus and not just for yourself. Youll know that you struggled for Jesus, not just for yourself. You’ll know that you loved for Jesus, not just for yourself. You’ll learn to depend on God, not any other substance. I bet you had no idea you still needed rescuing, but God is in the business of reaching out his hand and lifting you up.
( I had one of those single tear moments writing that)
Right now, you might feel low.
But God is a God of Crescendos.
You will also learn the deep value of community. You’ll learn how being open with others, especially after you’ve taken stuff to The Lord, is one of the most awesome freeing things in the world. You are a deeply introverted external processor and a circular thinker, so you’ll learn all new ways to communicate what you’re trying to say.
Thank God for training camp and The World Race. Thank God for people like Dustin Mick Dills, and Ben Baecker, men who could get you to open up without any BS. Thank God for Joy Grayszyk who could do the same. Spirit recognizes Spirit. Thank God for these people who not only showed you how to be raw, clear and precise, but naturally brought it out of you.
——————————————–
Okay so you know how you love Doritos? Yeah, you know how much you love cool ranch Doritos. Well, you aren’t gonna have them for eleven months, so don’t think about them. Any whoooo, here’s the analogy. You know how you love cool ranch Doritos? Well you’ve got a big ole bag of chips on your shoulder and it ain’t cool ranch Doritos. Its like freaking cappuccino lays. That’s gross. That’s a gross bag of chips. Their nasty. I hope they aren’t still selling them when I get home. You’ve got all this stuff going on in your gross bag of chips.
There is some harsh fear in there. There is also some irrational fear. Fear of the journey ahead. Fear of being Ill-equipped to really make a change in the world. Fear that you won’t connect to the people on your squad. Fear of loneliness. Fear of leaving everything you have ever known to see a foreign, unfamiliar world. Oh and there is that insecurity about your abilities that you have carried around since you were young. Also, I can’t forget all the crap people put you through, moments that you don’t want to forgive, I guess resentment is the right word there. But you don’t need to forgive those people and those situations because you are justified in your feelings right? Oh, and your need to always have your crap together is in there. All the feels you hide, all the emotions you don’t show are in there too, because you think that people don’t want to see them. I can’t forget the concern for your friends and family because they are all gonna fall apart without you right? Also your need for acceptance and approval is all up those chips. That kind of sounds to me like a big bag of self-absorption and misplaced focus. That tastes pretty bad and you’re eating away at it and its eating away at you.
You need to throw away that bag of chips and go eat some Chapatti.
Fear is a down payment on a problem you may never have.
A great many fears are self-fulfilling prophecies. So are great loves.
I believe love that is real and true creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, and not loving well, which is the same thing. We have to love with sufficient passion to push death out of our minds .You’ve gotta push death out of your mind, you’ve gotta learn to love. Youll learn how to do that during this trip. Maybe youll learn a little bit on your walks in Kathmandu, or maybe on your late night walks in Jemo 1.
.Somewhere in there, flickers of love casting out fear will change your heart.
Get your head out of your butt and love your team. Speak Life. Listen. Learn their stories. Ask about their families. Push them to Jesus. Love your team. Love your team. Love your team. Spend as much time in the Word with the community in Uganda as you can. They all have beautiful testimonies that you won’t forget, and time in scripture with them will bring those stories out of them.
Go work out more. Stretch. Go ride motor cycles with Denis and watch the faces of the people in town as they see a bearded mzungu in a shirt with ducks on it drive by, Its funny as junk. Go sing “Mighty to Save” with Melanie on the front porch. Your heart will melt.
I love you, Month One John. I truly do. Even though you’re insecure as ill get out and all sorts of other southern colloquialisms that I can throw at ya, I love you. I would say bless your heart, but that wouldn’t be kosher. I love who you are becoming.
-Sincerely,
Future John.
Honest confession. This is me, just me. Im writing from a very honest place about my life. Im in Honduras. Im in Month 10 of my mission trip. Ive seen a lot and grown so much. A great deal of my race, however, was spent regretting certain thought patterns that I had, or actions that I took earlier in the trip. I paid for it time and time again in my own heart and mind. The mind is a battlefield after all, and we can be our own worst critics. I certainly was mine. I was stumbling over something behind me. I was allowing things already forgiven to confine me. . Ive been processing the past ten months for the past ten months, sometimes from a healthy place, sometimes not. In the healthy places with God, Ive experienced incredible amounts of love, freedom, grace, and redemption. Ive been learning to “crash the chatterbox”, as Steven Furtick puts it. The chatterbox of negative thinking and lies that brings me down is being drowned out by the voice of God and who He says I am. I know hope, it has wings, it leads me to rest with the King. I’ve been walking with God in this journey of forgiveness.
(To the Fans of The Walking Dead, this is a spoiler Free Reference coming up, so don’t hate me.) Maggie, on an episode of The Walking Dead, quoted her father Herschel. Herschel used to say that “Forgiveness takes more strength than anger.”
So here it is.
I forgive myself. I forgive myself for saying the wrong things. I forgive myself for feeling insecure. I forgive myself for causing acca-awkward moments, or maybe I just felt awkward in moments. I forgive myself for judging others. I forgive myself for being a tool at times. I forgive myself for the moments where I felt inadequate, causing me to step back when I could have stepped up. I forgive myself.
Forgiveness, is FOR GIVING,
So give yourself this gift from time to time.
Death has no victory in my life. I am not a man bogged down with my own performance, bad or good. I am a man in love with his God and his tribe. I’m a man redeemed by Jesus Christ.
I’m not my mistakes, and I’m not my successes.
I’m not my strengths, and I’m not my weaknesses.
I’m not my accomplishments, an I’m not my downfalls.
I am hidden in Christ with God. That’s who I am.
