A lot of people have been asking me why I’m going on the World Race. It’s not to travel the world or to have cool stories to tell my kids when I’m shriveled and old. I love to travel and I love fun stories that make me appear cooler than I really am, but those are not involved in this decision.
The World Race is really about death.
It's about surrender; giving up your life to let God use it how He sees fit. It's about serving and loving others.
I’ve already mentioned that the most gut-wrenching part of this whole journey is putting myself into this blog. I’m kind of a control freak when it comes to my thoughts, emotions, what people know about me. I prefer to let people fill in the blanks about me in my silence than to open up and let them judge me clearly. Kind of that proverb about it being better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove yourself to be one.
My thoughts belong to me, I own them, possess them. I’m pretty stingy with them. I share them with God and a few select people, but otherwise people don’t get tons of my thoughts just put out there for them to see. I’ve witnessed too much judgment and condemnation to willingly put myself out there like that for the world to accept or reject as it sees fit. After all, I am me, and me belongs to me. That’s what I used to think anyway. And then God kind of hit me over the head with this “I made you, I died for you, you belong to me” stuff and I started to figure out that me didn’t belong to me and me wasn’t really even about me.
Most people don’t know me, because I haven’t let them. I haven’t let them because I fear judgment, I fear their thoughts about me, I fear that they won’t like the truth of who I am. This blog means I’m not going to be able to hide anymore or control who has what information about me. And this is kind of like stabbing a knife in my heart and handing over the crumbled pieces to God.
Ernest Hemingway said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed."
God has spent a long while slowly coaxing me into letting go of the things I believe are my identity. Giving up identity means you don’t exist, it means death. Death was God’s plan for us all along. I’m not suicidal, so every ounce of self-preserving fleshy-ness inside of me is telling me to run the other way and never look back, while God is saying, take up your cross and follow me. Why would anyone do this? Because Jesus is worth everything we have to give. You can trust Him with your life.
Jesus said, "If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it: but whoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 16:24-25
The world race, this blog is the end of me. I’ve been struggling to let that go and to finally write a post that essentially me for all the world to see.
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13:14
