Today is officially the half-way point on my World Race. I’ve been gone for 165 days, and I have 165 more to go. That sounds like a heck of a long time, but its flown by.
I only have five more ministries to work with, only five more communitites to swarm with love. I sometimes feel as if time is slipping through my hands like sand. Each grain of sand is a second of my life, forming piles and piles of time. Some of it was well-spent, but how many grains of sand did I waste these last 165 days?
How many relationships did I choose not to pursue because ‘there wasn’t enough time?’
Where there many more people could I have prayed for?
What about the times I pushed off conversations I needed to have?
How often did I choose myself over those I’m here to serve?
I don’t want to wallow in regrets here, but I look back and see so many missed opportunities!
My first few months were very comfortable. I had toilets and hot showers my first three months. The food every single month has been excellent. Our contacts have been amazing!
But when did that become the judge of whether a month was good? When did my own personal comfort define if my time was well-spent? Is that what I’m here for? What about the fruit thats coming from it?
I’ve been reading Seth Barne’s book Kingdom Journeys the last few days and its caused me to really consider my journey over the previous 6 months. The book speaks of the stages we go through while on a spiritual journey like the World Race: abandonment, brokenness, and dependence.
I’m still very much in the abandonment phase.
The day our plane landed in Ireland, day one of the Race, I realized I had left my cell phone on the airplane. I didn’t intend to use it as a phone but I still could use it like an iTouch, to go online, take pictures, etc. I was able to get it back, but I had a small taste of abandonment in the hour before that.
Two weeks into the Race, I spilled a mocha onto my Macbook and fried it. That was a real taste of abandonment.
Two months later, my Kindle malfunctioned and entirely stopped working. Another big taste of that abandonment.
But I’m still holding on.
I told myself that I left behind ‘everything’ back in July. But what about that 50+ pound backpack I carry around everywhere? I have more clothes with me than most of the people I am ministering to, but I still complain about not having enough. I still get a soda most days, I get to keep my iPod charged, and I have a hard drive full of movies and TV shows to keep me happy. I even have a guitar!
So much for abandonment.
I don’t want to let go, because it will be hard. But I’m six months into this thing. Its time! I need to stop holding onto my comforts. I want to be so much further along on this Race than I am right now, but that will never happen if I hold onto my comforts.
Abandonment precedes brokenness. I want to abandon! I want to be broken!
I’m tired of just walking through this Race. I can run. I know I can run! I just need to let go of my baggage, both literally and figuratively.
So here’s to the next 165 days; they will be the days that I let go, and I let God move in me. They will be the days I am open to be broken, that I become free through handing over my freedom to Christ. All of the things of the world are simply holding me back from living like I want to, like I was meant to.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:12 ESV
