Pershendetje!!! That’s hello in Albanian.
We departed Wednesday morning from Atlanta for the most intense travel session of my life (though, I expect them to become more difficult) that spanned five countries, seven time zones, and forty-eight hours with the use of three planes, a bus, and a microbus. It is sufficient to say that we sat a lot, and we did wait a lot. Overwhelmingly, the lesson that I have been given is patience and humility.
I’m normally the person that demands every detail and searches fervently to understand every facet of a situation that I’m in, and I may or may not panic on the inside when I don’t know what’s going on, and when I don’t have control over my situation. For forty-eight hours, I had little to no control over my situation, and the information that I desired was out of my reach in many ways.
I’ll give a huge shout-out to Kelly Anne and all of the teams leaders, as well as the Adventures in Missions staff. To Catherine and the other treasurers, and to Greg and Stefany, our logistics coordinators. They did a fantastic job organizing, coordinating, and funding our journey a quarter of the way around the world.
It was all I could manage not to ask them every minute of the trip where we were supposed to go next, what we were going to eat, what the number of our flights were, etc. I could have easily greyed the hair of every single person on our squad, but a huge dose of the Holy Spirit gave me the patience and the peace of mind to take a step back and trust that those who were chosen for leadership and organization would do a proper job of getting us there.
And they did. We didn’t miss a flight or a bus-ride, we paid attention to all of the signs and the changes, and I don’t think that we got in the wrong line once. Granted, we did have to shout “WAITWAITWAITWAIT” and wave down one of the buses in Serbia so that they’d pull back in and let us board. Had we arrived a minute later we would’ve missed it.
That moment in time was the defining moment for this lesson. We found out that we needed 100 of the local currency to pay for each of our bags, so Catherine had to rush back and withdraw enough money for us. At that moment I prayed and asked God for the transactions to go smoothly and for the bus driver to be patient… and a few more things that I don’t remember. But we waved down the bus, boarded, and the rest of the trip went without a hitch.
Let’s take a step back and diagnose, because I think that those two days for me can be representative of our relationship with God. It’s a safe bet to say that God has a lot planned for me that I could never anticipate, and that he knows my path, and that’s he going to take care of me. The logistics coordinators and team leads spent weeks planning and organizing our route, and the World Race staff in Gainesville purchased our plane tickets and planned our flights months in advance, but none of that information was known to me until we were in the moment. If that’s something man can plan and I can trust, I know that I can’t imagine the plan that God has for me, so why is it that I don’t trust God?
In hindsight it is every easy for us to see the places that God intervened to get us to where we are. My successive rejections from editing companies and two-year tenure with Verizon were devastating to me emotionally, but those were the steps necessary for me to talk to Dillon Wadewitz, and then meet Dustin Dills (again), and it was the path I was meant to take to arrive at the World Race. So why worry? Phillipians 4:6 says to worry about nothing, but to pray about everything. In all honesty, my desire for details and my desire to control my situation makes this teaching difficult for me to fully invest in, but I have faith that it’s what was meant for us.
We’re not called to try hard. We’re not called to be perfect. We’re called to come to the cross and to lay down our burdens, and then take the burden of Jesus Christ, which is easy and light. Now do not misunderstand me, this is far from an excuse to be lazy. God definitely desires and respects perserverence. A quick glance in the book of Proverbs makes that evident. But we are also not meant to control our lives. Our failing wisdom can’t comprehend the magnitude of God’s plans for us.
I think we should pray, listen, and act out in faith. Call it coincidence, but I’m comforted by the fact that I prayed for us to board the bus, and we were able to. It was such a tiny gesture from God to remind me that he’s there and he’s in control. It scares me to ask for more near misses, but each one will grow our faith, I’m sure, and I look forward to it.
Thank you, and God bless.
