Just like that, I find myself on the other side of the halfway mark. Suddenly, I only have five months left. There’s a word we like to throw around on the World Race. Actually, there are a lot of them. But the one in particular that I’m thinking of is “seasons”. Seasons on the race are as seasons in the weather and in life: ever-changing and often surprising.
The first four months of my race were a season. A season marked by loss, doubt, mistrust, confusion, anger, and heartbreak. When my dad died unexpectedly at the end of month one, I decided to stay on the race. Initially, I felt secure and confident about that decision, but as the months drew on, I began to question. My team lost a total of five loved ones in those first four months. Five earth-shattering phone calls, five unattended funerals.
I found myself in the dark. Not the kind of dark that’s utter and absolute nothingness—a kind that’s much worse. I found myself in a darkness that taunted me with frail beams of light—fading glances at hope.
I thought I had been buried.
Flash forward. Going into month five, I got a new team. This team has prayed endlessly over me and cast out the false identity of loss I didn’t know I’d claimed. In my mind I was the girl whose dad died on the World Race. I was the girl who sprained her ankle and couldn’t walk. I was the girl who just couldn’t catch a break. I was the girl who God had forgotten about.
I spent countless hours with tear-stained cheeks on a barren rock on a mountain in Swaziland crying out to God and asking Him why He was ignoring me. I made the decision (several times) to go home because I simply couldn’t reckon serving such a silent God. I told no one but the pages of my journal that I didn’t even know if God existed anymore.
This week, God answered one of the biggest, boldest prayers I’ve ever prayed. This month, I’ve watched prayers come to fruition within my team in a way so evident, so real, so absolutely undeniable, that God is the only possible explanation. As I was crying tears of joy and thanking God for His faithfulness, I was suddenly hit with the weight of one of the most important lessons I think I’ll ever learn:
I thought I had been buried, but I had really been planted.
Looking back now, I can see with clear eyes because I am truly, fully in the light. I know now that the small beams of light I experienced in the dark were sunshine—God’s light—trying to push through the dirt around me. Now I’m budding. Blooming. Being pelted constantly with raindrops but ever in the sun.
I needed to grow my roots in faith.
In those first four months—the first season of the race—God poured out some hard lessons on me. He smothered me in tough love. He knew I would question Him and doubt Him and yell at Him. But He also knew that my faith would be infinitely stronger for it. That once I poked my head through the dirt and into the sun, my roots would be firm and immovable in Him.
This new season that I’m in is one of faith, hope, joy, and answered prayers. Every day I feel like I’m being rewarded and every night I fall asleep feeling closer to Him than I did the night before. Life is still happening all around me. I’ve experienced more loss in this new season, watched loved ones struggle with hard times, and fought with myself internally. But these raindrops bring me life. They grow me. And with each little bit that I grow, I’m that much closer to the light.
