Lindsey Denton is one of the most fabulous humans to ever walk this earth. She’s intelligent and hilarious. She’s real and raw.
She’s honest.
As in, in all situations, you don’t have to choke her to be herself. It just comes naturally. She is who she is and she means what she says.
I met Lindsey at WR Training Camp last year and we quickly found out that we have a lot in common. We’ve walked through a lot of the same mud and we’ve worked hard to try and love that mud because it brought us here. Our starting point were eerily similar. However, three months after we starting running our races, with where we ended up, you would have never known. I desperately spent the first part of the Race slaving away at digging in, believing anything that sounded like it could be my missing piece. Lindsey spent hers questioning most of what the organization taught us.
Half way through India, we got put on the same team together. I quickly realized that in my head, I was asking all the same questions that she was. She was just brave enough to speak them out. I sat in denial and ignorance of what was going through my head and just tried to do what everyone else was doing while she was always open and honest about where she was. Hearing her thoughts, I quickly cultivated the fear of being the idiot. I was afraid I was trying too hard. I was afraid she would return home unchanged because she’s smart enough to not take anything at face value and I would return home completely transformed, but in the way of a brainwashed robot who fell for it. Fell for it all. And all of the sudden, I had to choose between Jesus and honesty.
Last night, Lindsey shared her testimony with the team and near the end, broke into tears as she told us about how her emotional stiff arm toward the Lord had been lowered.
“I’m a Christian now and I mean it.”
I heard the chains break as freedom washed over me. Chills covered me and tears just fell and fell and fell. The glass wall between me and what I wanted to grab shattered. It took the most honest person I knew and trusted to tell me the truth to say, “The Lord is real and He is good.” for me to step fully into the light. There’s something about people who always mean what they say declaring the goodness of the Lord.
Maybe you’re there. Maybe you’re waiting on the right person to say the right thing.
But who will you be if that day never comes?
With the time laid out before you, where will you turn if your day of confirmation never comes? I remember sitting on a bed talking to my teammates in Month 1 about all the doubt that was swirling around inside me and how I just needed something to click. One of them looked at me and said, “You talk like you’re just waiting on somebody to say something in a way you’ve never heard before, but it doesn’t always work like that.” After that day, I gave up on that waiting. It wasn’t until last night that I remembered I had ever waited at all. It wasn’t until I had stopped obsessing over it and began working out of blind faith that the Lord showed up and broke my chains.
We can’t keep living a way that expects the people around us to be hiding our missing pieces.
So maybe you’re walking that road. Maybe you’re battling honesty and Jesus. Logic and Jesus. Philosophy and Jesus. Maybe you’ve been wandering around holding a puzzle missing one piece. Maybe you’ve been waiting on the person with the key that finally fits your lock. Maybe it’s actually been years of looking.
The Lord showed up and set me free from my searching, but it wasn’t until I took my eyes off of the map and the passengers and put them on the driver that He stepped in.
Maybe you’re exhausted and you don’t even know what it means to be honest anymore because you’re so tangled up in a web of all the failed efforts.
He isn’t tired and He’s holding your missing piece, waiting to give it to you. He doesn’t hide Himself just to tease you.
How much time are we wasting trying to seek out the thing we think we need instead of just looking to the One who already knows the desires of our hearts and frankly, doesn’t think we’re idiots at all. He’s actually pretty fond of us.
How many things have we learned to live with that Jesus died to take away?
You don’t have to live with an unfinished puzzle anymore. With knees on the ground and palms upturned, He longs to make sense of it all. He longs to bring peace to our lives and an end to our searching of people for what we need.
He came that we may have freedom from our bondage to searching and everything He’s about desires to redeem and restore you to Himself, that in Him, you would find all the satisfaction and fulfillment the people around you can’t give.
“With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort.” 1 Corinthians 15:58
