I’m sitting in the upstairs loft above the foyer of an eclectic and very artsy hostel called Casa Oro in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. It’s a really clean town; I’m not used to that. I’m used to gritty roads littered with trash, kids asking for money, and the general inability to communicate with locals fluently. This town has its stumbling drunks, but it is mostly populated by tourists.
Today is my last day on The World Race. My elbows are turning redder as I lean against the metal table that my laptop is on. The little light on my extremely sentimentally valuable Western Digital, My Passport Ultra, two terabyte external hard drive is blinking on and off, and from the foyer a ton of different accents and languages are rising up to my ears because this a surf town that draws people from all over the world.
Jocelyn is sitting beside me working on her spreadsheets for logistics. Even though it’s a hot day, the breeze in this room from the fans above is perfect and peaceful. I’m just in a place where I need to talk about something on my heart. God has cultivated this quiet place for me to do so. The next day or two is going to be insane and restless as I travel home, so i really want to say what i need to say while its fresh in my heart.
For the past year of my life I’ve traveled the world in airplanes, and overly crammed busses next to people and livestock doing ministry. This is a world race blog so that’s obvious and you’ve all seen the Instagram pictures and Facebook posts. To get straight to the point I didn’t do it alone. I did life with forty-ish people for a year.
In a raw and very human sort of fashion we did this thing called The World Race. Sometimes we were terrified of what was next. Sometimes we cried when we left a village or a family or a continent. Sometimes we didn’t want to see another soul. Sometimes we didn’t want to be alone. Sometimes we wanted to go home and sometimes we didn’t want to leave.
All of us got on a plane in Atlanta Georgia last September after we said goodbye to what we call normal life. But to be candid the world race has been our normal for eleven months. We were thrown into situations completely out of our control, but God gave us everything we needed to make it happen. The only true constant on this trip for all of us has been Jesus Christ and each other. The each other part of that happened because God brought us together. The each other part of that is what I want to talk about.
I no longer wonder if people get me. I no longer wonder if I’m misunderstood. I no longer feel alone. I have a tribe and a family that has been through the same treacherous water of spiritual warfare and intense travel and powerful ministry that I have. This hasn’t been a “me” thing. This has been a “we” thing. This is a family of God thing. I know that these people care about me and I don’t feel judged. I love them. When I encounter something in my life in the future that brings pain or difficulty, I’m probably going to turn to my squad because I know they get it. I no longer feel the negative emotions as powerfully as I used to because my life has been supercharged with truth and grace thanks to Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit working in my life and through the lives of the people on this trip with me.
We’ve engaged in an ancient conflict as old as time. We trespassed on private property with light in places filled with shuttering enemies desperate to snuff it out because exposure would mean their destruction. Demons of Smoke and dirty mirrors could only use our pasts as weapons against us. When you have Jesus, and when you have community, our pasts are pitiful weapons in their hands, but powerful weapons in our hands that we can actually turn around and use against them saying this is my story and this is how Jesus rescued me. Something that could have beaten the living hell out of me actually beat things out of me that belonged in hell.
My squad has relentlessly loved and served and granted grace. I’ve seen them do things that could have gone unnoticed that restored my faith in my Christianity but also humanity. I’ve seen people do more on this trip that honored God than was ever posted about on Instagram. I see a generation of men and women on my squad that will be a generation of present mothers and fathers, Jesus worshipers, and hard workers. I’ve seen them go out of their way to show a better way of living and to show that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life.
I love my squad, and I could write paragraphs about each of them and not stop talking about them, but when I think about it, I actually want to shut my mouth, bow my head, and give thanks to God for all He has done through these people this year. My life will never be the same because of them. This has been one of my favorite weeks on the trip because some of the most honest and beautiful conversations have happened between myself and others that brought major healing and deeper trust.
Something that I love about this moment at this hotel right now is that just down one staircase and up another is a wall covered with envelopes with our names on them. In the envelopes are love letters to each other. I’m going home tomorrow morning, but im going home loved beyond belief by the God who will love me all of my days and by people He loved me through and who loved me through it all.
