I feel a bit bipolar in the way I’m thinking right about the World Race. Sometimes it’s like the only thing keeping me together is my skin. Half of me just wants to jump on a plane right now and get on with this thing and the other half of me wants to call up AIM and tell them never mind. What makes it worse is that niether of these is actually possible. I can’t leave tomorrow and even though I could change my mind, that’s not what God wants for my life.
It took me a little while to figure out why I don’t want to go on the World Race. But, I began to notice a pattern in my life. A pattern that half surprised me. I don’t like change. This really surprised me because I’m all for embracing change, but only when I want the change. And, only external change.
There were two things I that made me realize this. The first is school and the second is my devotional.
As for school goes, I’m just kind of done with it (and knowing that once it’s done I’m going on the World Race isn’t helping). I am ready for new in my life. I’m not the kind of person that want’s to sit in the same place for a long time, so four years at one place in one stage of life feels a bit stagnate. I’m ready to move on with my life. This is change that I’m embracing because I want it and this is change that is outside of me.
As for my devotional, I noticed a pattern. I teach Kindergarten through fifth graders at my church weekly and one thing I teach them is that the Bible is like a mirror; in other words, it shows you the real you and where you could improve. The Bible has a bad habit of revealing who you really are and showing you how you can be better – what you need to work on to become more like Jesus. So the pattern I noticed, is that I am a lot less likely to read my Bible when I feel God trying to reveal something about myself. Changing who you are means time, pain, loss, and more. I don’t want to do any of this.
Here’s the deal, I don’t want to go on the World Race because I don’t want to change. I am happy with who I am. And the World Race is going to change me and grow me. But this lack of desire to change goes deeper. I do want to be a better person and I’m willing to put in the work to be better. The problem is that God is going to open my eyes and my heart to the world that I am going to experience and this is going to change me at the core.
I know that I’m called into missions, but I don’t want to do it. I want the dream and plans I had for my life to be enough for me, but even now when I think about the life I want I can feel something missing. That something is what God is give me in the life I have as a missionary and in the life I want here in America is missing whatever that is.
Every step I take toward the World Race is making the dreams I have weaker and weaker. They’re not enough. And I don’t want that. I don’t want God to change my plans or my dreams for the life I want. I don’t want him to merge my will with His own because I don’t want to do His will. This is the change that I don’t want.
And yet here I am. Torn between what I want and what I don’t want. I’m torn between the same thing because I know that if I come back, I am going to be coming back to a place that is no longer my home. When I come home my heart with be left scatter across the faces of the people that touch my life. I don’t want my heart to be there but I’m going anyway.
It’s too late for me to turn back because God is already changing my desires. Even now, if I chose not to go, this life wouldn’t be enough for me.
I struggle everyday to hold on to what little parts of my character and my desires I recognize from the past and I struggle everyday to let go of what little I have left because what God has in store for me is far greater than anything I could dream up on my own.
So here I am, choosing to GO.
