I’ve been back in the States for a little over a week now. By now the reality of the Race being over has finally set in, but it took awhile for me to fully embrace it. Even though I was back home, it just didn’t feel like the Race was over. And actually, “the Race” should never be over. The Race isn’t just a break from life. It shows what life is about: living with Christ at the center.
This has been something I’ve been trying to remind myself of a lot the last couple months. I don’t want the Race to just be a dream and as if it never happened. I want it to impact the way I live the rest of my life. And those first couple days of being back in New York were a good reminder for that.
We landed at JFK a couple Saturdays ago. Most of the squad was finding connecting flights right away to get home, but a small group of us were looking to chill in the NYC area for a couple days before heading back home. My group was going to stay at one of my friend’s friend’s house in northern New Jersey, about an hour from the city. It was free lodging so being the Racers that we are we jumped right on it.
The guy wasn’t answering his phone when we got into the airport, so after saying goodbye to our squadmates, we proceeded to huddle in a corner of the airport lobby and figure out transportation for the next 2 hours. Renting a car ended up being too expensive and taking a taxi wasn’t much of a better option. Finally a lady came up to us and helped get an airport shuttle that would take us directly to our address for a reasonable price.
As we were driving to the place, we had some amazing conversation with the driver and were able to encourage him and speak life into him. It encouraged me as well as it showed me people here need just as much of Jesus in their life as people around the world do. I want to continually be open to the people God places in my life wherever I am at.
Things didn’t work out with staying at the house, so we ended up at a church that my friend knew of in the Newark area. And there we stayed for 3 nights during our NYC mini-vacation. We slept on the floor. We didn’t shower at all because the church had none. We had to take two different buses to get into the city. We couldn’t even flush our toilet paper! I was almost hesitant to drink the tap water, but I figured my well-traveled stomach good manage it.
Needless to say, it wasn’t what any of us dreamed our time in NYC would look like. But although it wasn’t comfortable and in many ways felt more like the Race than some of the other countries we were in, I couldn’t have asked for anything better because God’s hand was over it all. The church had a couple events going on during our time there and God used them in so many ways to encourage me and speak to me. I left New York feeling a lot closer to God than I did when leaving Malaysia. And I’ll take that over any “vacation.”
If you go on the Race, you’ll hear it said a lot that the Race isn’t just 11 months. And it’s so true. Yeah you may not be living out of a backpack or traveling month to month or being without certain luxuries of home (unless you’re living in New Jersey), but seeking the Lord and doing His work is something we all should be doing no matter where we are. As I figure out the next steps of my life, I pray those things will always be present.
