For the record, this blog is way overdue. Over the past couple of years I’ve often wanted to write something, but never got around to it. But as I reflected on what this day means in my life, I found it fitting that it be today…
For the past two and a half years since I left AIM, I’ve had the privilege of working with Family Link Foster-Adoption and help get Legacy Ranch, a children’s home in South-Central Texas up and running. At one of our foster parent trainings, we talked about the healing process our kids go through. For many of our foster kids that had literally faced the depths of hell, they had be taken out, stabilized, and then healing would ultimately come. Through adoption, they would gain their new identity and be enabled to start truly walking their destiny out. I’ve now come to realize that this was exactly the spiritual journey God had walked me through with the World Race.
On May 28, 2009 I sat on a plane from Atlanta to Memphis having just left The the World Race Training Camp three days before finishing. As I sat back in my seat, I thought about the past week and all the people I had just encountered. They had something different, something I had never truly experienced. It was something that I needed… something that I wanted.
It’s been five years since I sat on that plane, and I can honestly say that that moment was the biggest turning point of my life. Up to that point in my life, I was stuck. Legalism, with its lies of performance, perfection, and rejection, had kept me isolated, beaten and broken, literally to almost the point of death. But then God stepped in, and using the WR, rescued me. For the first time I was told that this was not okay, that these lies and bondage were not who I really was. I spent the next year and a half in the ATX where grace and love constantly invaded my life as truth started setting me free. In October 2010, I was finally released to embark on this crazy adventure, where through my team, squadmates, and his precious children throughout the nations, healing was found, life spoken, identity revealed, passions awakened, and callings confirmed.
Because of God using The World Race in my life, I know that I know that I know… that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do . I am free to love my children and to try to love them well. I am able to fight and protect them. I’m able to hold them and comfort them. I’m able to show them the hope that love wins and that love does prevail.
And so, to the World Race and all the staff and leadership that I’ve encountered through the Race along the way…
THANK YOU.
Thank you for pouring into this generation. Thank for believing in us… and not letting us settle. Thank you for calling us out… and not giving up on us. Thank you for expanding our horizons… stretching our faith… and enlarging our hearts. Thank you for making us move past ourselves… and pushing us even farther. Thank you for inviting us into the relentless pursuit… and then letting us take off with it. Thank you for encouraging us to dream… and then daring us to dream bigger. And thank you for letting us feel love… show love… and be love.
