I’m crying on the concrete floor of Team Overflow’s bedroom in the church. I ducked away from a dance meeting to seek solace from community living.
For the first time in what feels like weeks, my mind is where my feet are. I’m present in this moment. “How could this happen?” plays on repeat in my mind. “You were doing so well. How did you grow numb again?”
It took me until my 20’s to recognize this dangerous pattern I have. If too many things that I have no control over go wrong, I slowly sink in to a state of numbness. Like a bad drug, I drift in to a mindset of not caring without even noticing it. Numbness is a coping mechanism I adopted from childhood. A mechanism that protects you in the thinking that says, “bad things are going to happen, so I can’t care. If you don’t care, it can’t hurt you. If you don’t have expectations, then you won’t get disappointed.”
I’ll be the first to tell you, that’s no way to live. If you ever find yourself in that state of mind, do whatever you need to to get out. Without interception from the Holy Spirit, discernment from people who care, or self awareness, you can spend your whole life in that comfortably numb lull.
A huge indicator that you aren’t living in the present happens when you’re in situations where you’d normally be overcome with peace or excitement and you find that you feel nothing. My moment of profound bliss came to me today on the back of a motorcycle.
With the wind in my hair and my fist clenched to the only pole keeping me from falling off, I look around me for the first time since I got to the Philippines. It’s as if the world was in slow motion and I was seeing it through God’s eyes for the first time in a long time. I stare intently at the worn down houses with tiny shops out front. I pass a lake lined with palm trees and houses with stilts on the horizon. I’m on a trike (a motorcycle with a sidecar holding Marissa and Faith).
I take this drive nearly everyday in our small town of Bambang. Today the Lord wanted me to see something different. This moment becomes surreal and I let myself feel something. This scene is straight out of a movie. I’m out here living the life I’ve always dreamt. God’s beauty is all around me- in the wind blowing through my hair, in the mangy dog walking down the street, and in the toothless smiles of children covered in dirt. This is living now.
A wave of guilt washes over me. “Why don’t I feel anything?” I know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I need to be awake for this entire Race.
That’s when I realized, emotional numbness causes you to go in to a spiritual sleep. The same coping mechanism that helped me survive when I needed to be a survivor, is now hindering me from thriving. I can not feel the good when I don’t deal with the bad.
At home, I have this balance of healthy coping tools and stable people to process with. But out here, traveling the world with 40 people (all of whom were former strangers this time last year), changed that. At home, I find comfort in exciting events coming up and my perfect concoction of structured routine (work/workout/play/pray/hangout) and spontaneous adventure.
God has not called me to such a life of comfort out here. I am not in control of what I do, where I do it, when I do it, or who I am with.
An extra facet of this Race that you don’t think about when you’re signing contracts and prepping your gear is that you may at times feel totally alone out here. You have your friends, but overall it can get a bit dog eat dog. Each person has needs that aren’t being met, each person is dealing with their own form of brokenness that shows up unexpectedly in dire situations, and each person is on the brink of reaching some sort of burn out knowing there are 4 months left to keep pushing in.
Energy is scare. Time is valuable. And being in the 4th country where all 40 of our squadmates are living together, we’re all pretty exhausted. That means free time and alone time are about as rare as blue moons.
A great free solo climber wrote:
“Expeditions like these break you down and expose your weaknesses- with nothing to distract you from your deepest thoughts and fears. But, presence like this is a gift, a really uncomfortable one.”
A lot is happening within my squad of 40, within my team of 7, and within myself and my life back home. I’m on the brink of something huge here. God is really unfolding a new piece of the puzzle that will change the rest of my life. I don’t know what that is yet, because I’m at the climax of this story, but I can’t wait to find out.
My race is at its crescendo as my world is crumbling around me.
I just set some huge boundaries with my family that changed the little communication we did have.
Four people left our squad this week. Team changes are also coming in a week, meaning I may have 6 new people to get to know through 24/7 exposure.
A new layer of old issues like trust, abandonment, and neglect are coming up for another round of pruning.
I’m praying for energy for ministry. Somehow amidst all the diversity, it feels monotonous.
I met someone on the Race and fell for him even though we both know there’s no possibility of dating until after the Race.
I’m still not over Barbara dying and I can’t imagine what my first week home will be like without her.
I’ve had close friends move away, get married, graduate, and get engaged. The life I walked away from in September isn’t the same one I’ll be walking back in to in July.
I’m realizing, I’ll probably only be home on O’ahu for two weeks after the Race before I take off onto the next thing.
Life is quite raw these days.
That comfortable balance I had is greatly missed, but the story God is writing is far more interesting than that balance.
