I have road rage.
SUPRISE!
This little lady can be a fiery ball of fury behind the wheel…
*Stuck in back of someone going slow* “Wow… Cautious Cathy over here…” *Hard eye-rolls and exasperated huffing* “Are you 100?” *Finally whips around and cruises by* “Yep! Ancient. Wow… Listen Grandma, I know you’re not anxious to get to your grave-plot and all but some people have places to BE!!”
Hm… Ugly, isn’t it? I notice that about myself. But you know what?
My road rage is just a symptom.
An outward expression of an inner turmoil.
Last year was hard for me. I struggled in a role at my job that wasn’t the right fit for me. I grew a thick skin I never wanted.
At first I thought nothing of the road rage, it just crept in when I was alone in the car.
Until that anger began to creep into my workplace. Those traffic lane reactions became tense moment reactions. Then transformed from irritation in situations, to outburst reactions towards people.
And even worse, I couldn’t stop.
Time went on and my attitude grew more and more negative and I began to hate who I’d become.
I thought maybe changing my role at my job would fix it. Less stress, more joy right?
Leading up to Training Camp, I wondered if I was even “ready” for it. I imagined it to be 10 days of camping and classes. Camping and classes, I could get through that! Then when I got out into the real world, on the race, I would start to work on myself. Start fixing my attitude, my heart. I’ll just sit through training and go home and get ready to go. Done.
Here is what I imagined Training Camp to be like:
“Ok, welcome everyone. Today is Day 1 of training and today we are going focus on India. Take a look at your hand-outs and try to follow along. Ok, now when you’re in India, make sure you ____________. But make sure you do not ____________…”
Training Camp wasn’t about schooling us into “missionaries”. It transformed and oriented our hearts. Connected us to Jesus in new and deeper ways.
(Whoa…what? You mean you’re not “training us” to be “good missionaries”?! Or how to “live in other countries”?)
I went to Training Camp feeling like maybe I was just an unkind, angry, emotionally volatile person who eventually people would grow to not like so much anymore. There was a dullness over me, a feeling of separation from the Lord. But those are all lies.
I’ll get to you later… lies.
You see, as I slipped away in life from the resting shore of God’s love for me I would become swept up in waves of anger. At work, at home, in my relationships with my family, at myself. And then, instead of clinging to grace, to all the truths God says of me… I got caught up in the nets of lies and shame.
The first day of Training Camp they spoke on Matthew 4: 18-22.
Those fisherman who later became Jesus’ disciples dropped everything to follow Him. In a way that is what we are doing with the World Race.
But sometimes we try to follow Jesus and still cling to our old “fishing nets”. As if we might need them again, go back to the way things were.
Over the course of those 10 days I slowly began to realize that once you truly know Jesus’ love for you, your life can never be the same. We don’t go into the World to tell the “lost and lonely” about Jesus because He’ll be good for them. I cannot help but to tell anyone about Him because,
He is so good to me
We Love because He first Loved Us.
1 John 4:7-21
He delights in us- Zephaniah 3:17
He knows each of us better than we will ever know ourselves – Psalm 139
He came so that we would have a full and abundant, JOYFUL life – John 10:10
But even as I know those truths in my mind, my heart clung for dull life to my old familiar nets.
There is a colloquialism that goes something like:
You cannot tell others how much Jesus loves them until you truly understand how much He cherishes you.
A little bit corny. And %1,000 truth.
When a fisherman is out to sea and a net becomes too heavy for the boat to bare or too tangled to ever come undone, the only choice is to cut it.
In order to share the love of Jesus I have to cut myself free.
Free from the lies, the bitterness, the shame, un-forgiveness, comparison, I can go on and on. Because that is not Jesus’ love for me.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…” 2 Corinthians 5: 17-18
That is why I go on the World Race. For all things new.
Snip Snip.
