Dear Friends and Family,
I have been home from the world race for almost exactly 2 months now. Somehow, those two months feel like they have lasted forever, and simultaneously feel like they have passed in the blink of an eye. Sharing with you all a “final blog” has been looming over me ever since I got home. I knew that I was going to have to write one to wrap up my experience with you, but the idea of it made my stomach drop every time I thought about it. This probably seems like a confusing reaction… it seems like I should be ecstatic to summarize my experience and share a few of the things that the Lord did in my life! And those things are exciting to me, but the thing that made my head hurt and my fists clench was figuring out how. I don’t even know how many times in these past couple months I have sat down at this computer, opened up a Word document, stared at it, and quickly exited out. How do I put into words these past 9 months of my life?! If I’m being honest, it would have been easy for me to sit down at this computer, open up a Word document, and type up a sweet little blog telling you exactly what I think you would want to hear. But that’s why this task has been so daunting for me. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to portray my experience as something that it wasn’t. Above all, I want to be real with you. Purely genuine. And consequently, I began to realize why it was so hard for me to write something that was real. I had built this idea in my head that all of you, friends, family, and supporters, had certain expectations of what my experience had been. And because of that, I felt the need to share something inspiring, impressive, and even felt that I needed to prove myself, and prove that I was worthy of your prayerful and financial support. I realized that I felt guilt about things on the world race that I feel I could have done better. That I could have done more, been more selfless, been more courageous in preaching the gospel. Basically, I began to feel like my experience wasn’t good enough. That if I shared what it really was, that I would disappoint. But then, my Father revealed to me through a sweet conversation with a friend, that what I was really trying to do, was take away from what he DID do in me and through me on this adventure! Who am I to try to take away from the Lord’s work. My experience was exactly what it needed to be. Seeking my affirmation from people is so fleeting. When I look to Him, He reminds me that my story is enough. That I am enough. So, that being said, here’s me:
The world race isn’t what it seems like it will be. I think that every world racer in history can attest to that. The videos on the website, the pictures on instagram, the blogs… no matter how honest and raw those are, no one could actually begin to understand what the world race is like unless they experience it firsthand. Prior to the world race, it basically seems like going on the world race will somehow magically fix all of your problems. I don’t really know why it seems like that, but personally, when my launch time was quickly approaching, I remember feeling at a “low” in my relationship with God. I honestly remember thinking to myself, “I can’t wait to finally be on the world race where I will have a really good relationship with God.” WHAT?! (this is lie #1)
Lesson #1: your relationship with God can not and will not change or grow if you are constantly relying on your circumstances or community to do all the work for you. No matter where you are, whether it is in Lexington Kentucky or the Khalahari Desert… your relationship with God is going to have it’s ups and downs as any relationship does, but it will always be between you and HIM! If you are basing your relationship with him off of your circumstances as I clearly was, that’s no relationship at all.
Lie #2: that once you are on the world race you will all of a sudden have so much courage and boldness in preaching the gospel and will be doing it ALL THE TIME.
Lesson #2: if you don’t have the courage and boldness to share your faith and preach the gospel in your homes and in your communities, what somehow makes us think that living in a different country will magically turn us into evangelical superstars?! The world race is very different than going on a week long mission trip. If you have been on one of these trips you know that within this week there are so many things planned and jam packed into your short schedule, but you leave that week feeling so productive, very changed, and extremely exhausted. The world race isn’t quite the same. We went, and we settled in, and after a while it begins to feel like “normal life” just in a different country. Most of the time we didn’t have a super strict schedule filling up the entire day with ministries, and most of the time we didn’t have anyone other than ourselves holding us accountable for our amount of “productivity”. It all felt very normal. In daily life here in America, every single day we have choices. If we are at home, we have a choice relax or something, or we could always go on the streets and evangelize!… if we are at school, we have a choice to walk through the halls and go to classes and gossip with friends, or we could be intentional about sharing our faith and declaring what we believe in! Just because we were living in a different country didn’t change those daily choices. Yes, sometimes we had scheduled ministry, but more often than not we got to make that choice of whether to stay home or to go out on the streets. There’s nothing magical about another country that makes you any more likely to choose the latter than you would be on a normal day at home in America!
Lie #3: when you go on the world race you will see all kinds of miraculous healings, signs and wonders, and you will see God work in ways like never before.
Lesson #3: now this one isn’t completely a lie! There are many miraculous things that people experience on the world race. But the lie is that they experience them because they are on the world race, or because they are in another country. I believe that the truth of it is, not the program, but the GOD that we serve!! The God that does miraculous signs and wonders that you hear about happening all over the world, is the SAME GOD that we know! It isn’t the program, it isn’t the country, it is our Jesus. And we need to open our hearts to experiencing Him in new ways, because we want to know Him. Because our hearts desire and long for intimacy with him.
There are probably a few more of these “lies vs. lessons” that I could share, but I do have some specific things that the Lord changed in my heart that I want to share too.
Just to summarize, these are some of the things that I learned on the world race:
- Compassion
- Justice
- Prayer is more than talking to God, but listening to Him
- The importance of vulnerability
- A deep passion for worship
- A new appreciation for the Word of God
- Grace for myself and for others
- Fear and awe of God’s power
- Sacrifice
Two of the biggest changes that I have now realized that were made in me on the world race are compassion and a passion for justice. My prayer before I left was “break my heart for what breaks yours.” And he did. He opened my eyes and my heart to the injustice that is not only in Guatemala, Malaysia, and Botswana, but right here in Lexington. Now that my heart has been invaded by that love for people that I don’t even know, it is impossible to go back. I pray every day that the Lord will reveal to me how to join in this work towards justice. He took me out of my comfortable ignorance and showed me that I can’t live in apathy towards issues that seem so foreign to my little life. I fell in love with refugees, with the homeless, the poor and the oppressed. The invisibles, the druggies, the outcasts, the misunderstood. I can no longer live in a way that ignores the reality of the hurt in this world. For the rest of my life I will stand next to my Jesus and fight alongside him to bring restoration to his people!
Not everyone needs to go on the world race. The Lord calls exactly who he knows needs it as a part of their journey. I needed to go to realize what’s going on in my own backyard. I needed to go in order for me to be vulnerable in front of the Lord and allow him to do the work in me that needs to be done.
On the World Race: I laughed, I cried, I danced, I sang, I screamed, I learned, I changed, I loved.
God took me on the world race to show me who I was meant to be. To show me all that I can be. But I am not a world racer. I am just a human being. A daughter of a king, and a lover of people. The world race was just a part of my journey. It was what I needed to move forward in my life. But it wasn’t the program, it was my God. So who cares about expectations? It was exactly what it needed to be. Those experiences and those people will be with me forever, but now it’s time for me to take those things and figure out how I am going to use them to not only live my life, but live my life completely sold out to the Most High King!
Thank you all again for all of your support throughout my journey. College is up next! I can’t wait to see what is in store for me there, and know that it is exactly where I am supposed to be. If you’re reading this right now, I also need to thank you for reading through the entirety of this very long post!
Much love always,
Megan
