I’ve been avoiding this blog for a long time, and I have no idea why.
This road to get to launch has not been an easy one. Every single one of the 42 people on my squad and myself can attest to that. A lot of us didn’t even know we were going on the race until just a few weeks before training camp. But, somehow, we all made a choice and a change that led us here.
Imagine your daily routine. You wake up probably around 8am (or 11:30am if you’re like my household), brush your teeth, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, clock out, go back home, go through the mail, eat dinner, watch some tv, and go to bed. Same thing, day in and day out. Now occasionally you might do something fun, like go to a concert, or go on a date, or go to the movies (pretty exciting, huh?), but never every day. Those are fun and special things, they’re meant for fun and special occasions, right?
Well, why can’t we always choose to do things that excite us? Why are things that are defined as fun or special confined to such small boundaries, such as a certain day or occasion? Because we make the choice to limit them to such boundaries.
In this blog post I wanted to focus on a struggle in my life that I don’t acknowledge or accept too often, and how it led me to change my life. The words “the only constant is change” are written in a hallway in Exeter Hospital, a place I have become very familiar with this past year. I have had two major surgeries in twelve short months, one last August and one last December, with intense treatment and plenty of hospital visits. I had to carry a wound vac around school my senior year. I have to live with permanent nerve damage to my back. At one point, after missing the first two weeks of my senior year already, I was leaving school early three times a week in order to go to wound therapy at the hospital. I had teachers who would yell at me for missing so much school, without knowing the full extent, or any extent, of what was going on. If there was any point in my life where I felt hopeless, it was this. I was beyond humiliated to be the girl at school with a tube attached to her and who went to the school nurse several times a day because she physically could not make it through the day. I didn’t understand why this had happened to me, and why it was me who had to go through this awful treatment and healing.
Just as I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. A LOT worse. I walked into therapy one day, they took my vitals as usual, and did all the normal things they do at my visits. Usually my nurse would tell me I was healing just fine, and I would get on my way. But, all I heard was silence. She proceeded to ask me if I was keeping up with my meds and care for my back, and I replied yes. If anything I had been feeling better than normal. She told me I had completely reversed in the healing process drastically. This led to me getting a second surgery only a week from being told this. After my second surgery I was drained. In total, this was the fourth surgery I had had for this issue. All I did day in and day out was lay on the couch and watch Netflix because I could barely do anything else. And when I did finally heal, this laziness carried over. Each day I was doing nothing, not taking advantage of anything life was giving to me. My grades started to suffer. My body was physically and emotionally suffering. My ambition was gone.
I became completely self conscious about my grades, so much that I procrastinated even more, and lost all focus on my future. I let those letters on my report cards define me. Also, in a strange way, I became comfortable with the fact that I was constantly at the hospital, constantly having to deal with and care for this issue. Because of this, I decided not to apply to college (or I may have just missed all the deadlines), but rather look at gap year programs, since my sister had done one following her graduation. I came into this gap year for the wrong reasons, I was looking for the next thing to do. I sit here writing this for you for the right reasons. God put me through that low to bring me to this high. By my poor choices and poor emotional well-being, I was led to something that has easily been confirmed the greatest decision of my life.
After officially being accepted to The World Race, and being fully in good health, I made a choice to start living. I wanted to make up for the days I had lost and the time I had wasted. I put down my phone, put aside my excuses, and did stuff. I was going out every night until sunrise just to be in the presence of people and to see what God’s creation had to offer. No, I didn’t do the “fun things” such as go to the movies, or play laser tag, but I did things like cliff jumping, star-gazing, exploring the docks near me at night, and watching the sunrise at the beach. I did things that were so beneficial, incredibly fun, and rewarding, at no expense. I’m sure my mother wasn’t too happy about this but without these nights I wouldn’t have learned what it meant to choose change. I just recently got back from a trip to Texas to visit some of my squadmates, and there was never a moment where we weren’t choosing to do something out of our comfort zones, whether is was dancing on a completely open and public gold course looking like fools, or jumping off cliffs 40 feet above water at two in the morning.
My point is is that we all have some sort of routine, or at least something we are used to and comfortable with. But, the point of life is not to be comfortable; It’s to be uncomfortable in order to bring comfort to others. Now, I’m not saying you all should get a one way ticket and leave the country for nine months to be a missionary, but, if God is calling you to something or you feel a tug somewhere, follow it. The only constant in your life should be change, and when you reach the point where it is, you’re living life right.
