“What am I doing?”
In the month since I committed to doing the World Race, that is phrase that has run through my head more than anything else.
It’s 1:30 in the morning. I can’t sleep. I’m staring out my bedroom window. I’m just stuck processing the information that in 7 months’ time, I’ll be gazing up at this same moon from Serbia. What am I doing?
I can’t help but replay this question in my head because from my viewpoint, I’m the last person who would do something like this. I’ve never in my life been a risk-taker. Ever. I’ve played my life about as close to the guardrails as you can. I’ve never stepped out of my comfort zone for any reason. Save one trip to England when I was six years old, and I have never left the Southeast region of the United States. Yet here I go, on a trip that will take me to all corners of the globe through places I could have never even imagined. What. Am. I. Doing.
But as unfathomable as it seems for me, this is God’s sweet spot. He loves this kind of thing.
“You have 5000 mouths that need to be fed? Here have a few fish and handful of bread.”
“You’re trying to cross the Red Sea? Quit looking for boats, I’ll part it.”
“Oh there’s an 8-foot-tall ironclad behemoth slaughtering our best soldiers? Send that fourteen-year-old with a slingshot.”
God loves having the odds stacked against Him. The more unbelievable the works, the more glory that is shown to Him. Sure, it would be easy enough to send a Christian lifer who’s been prayerfully prepping for this experience since birth (no offense intended to anyone who has done that). But He doesn’t want easy, He wants what shows the fullness of who He is. So let’s send that kid who hasn’t even travelled his own country on a yearlong international mission, because who doesn’t love an underdog?
I think that’s why He called me. I have no business doing anything this incredible, but He put it in my heart and I’m not about question it. The next year and a half is going to be the most exciting, difficult, eye-opening, challenging, indescribably journey I have ever experienced. From fundraising to equipment-buying to training camp to hard goodbyes to learning how life works in a different country 11 times; it’s going to be a wonderful Spirit-filled ride. And if one thing is for sure, it’s that I’m never going to stop asking myself
“What am I doing?”
