I’ve been on this adventure for five-and-a-half months. I’ve been through five different countries, five different ministries, and two different teams. The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and now Thailand. Evangelizing, community health outreach, feeding ministry, ranch work, teaching English, and . . . more teaching English. Team Intentional Love and, now, team United Difference. Here I sit, in the bedroom of a church, typing this blog in Phang Nga and thinking about how far I’ve come.
I can remember back when I was accepted to the World Race and it seemed like a far off dream. I spent day in and day out reading Racer’s blogs and watching their videos. I was hardly present in my life then and, instead, I lived in the future. I daydreamed and romanticized and wished for the day launch would come. I thought about the friends I would make, the ways my heart would be broken, about how God would use this trip to wreck me. To change me. But the thing I’ve realized is, at the exact halfway point of this trip . . . the World Race hasn’t changed me like I thought it would.
Before launch, I thought I knew exactly how God would work in me. I was ready for my heart to be broken. I even prayed nightly that God would use this trip to break my heart. And He did . . . boy, He did. But just not how I thought He would. I thought every country would break me. Seeing children in poverty. Seeing the world’s great need. Tending to the homeless. Feeding the hungry. Healing the sick. I thought all of this would wreck me. I thought my compassion would get the best of me and I would be sobbing monthly; not just at the sight of the people and their need, but also from the friendships I’d make in each country. I want to dispel some of these things for you guys, not to be a Debbie downer, but I know these might be expectations for future Racers . . . and they aren’t necessarily unhealthy, but when they didn’t happen, I felt like I was a failure. I felt like I had done something wrong.
Every country did not break me. I don’t want to sound heartless or compassionless (if you know me, you know I am pretty much bursting at the seams with compassion) but I don’t think seeing any particular thing has broken my heart. Or made me sob. I served in the poorest nation in the world (Haiti) and saw children living in heartbreaking conditions, but I didn’t break. I didn’t cry. I thought it was sad, yeah. I wished there was more ways I could help. I wish I could have done more than just take surveys and cut grass with a machete. But my heart didn’t break. At the end of most months, I was more than happy to load up on the bus and get going to the next ministry. There has actually only been one month where I cried having to leave: Costa Rica. I’m pretty sure Thailand is going to bring about the same reaction. But for the rest of the months, it didn’t hurt to leave.
One saying I learned on the Race is “If the goodbye is hard, that means you did something right.” As much as I love that saying, I also have to say that, if the goodbye isn’t hard, that doesn’t necessarily mean you did something wrong. Future Racers, you are going to want to feel that pain at each goodbye, that attachment to each ministry and country . . . but the reality is you are more than likely not going to. I was three months into the Race before I fell in love with a ministry (Costa Rica). It took three more months to get to another one I felt strongly about (Thailand). When my teammates were crying over Guatemala, and I wasn’t, I felt uneasy. I tried to figure out why I wasn’t sad to leave. Had I done something wrong? Was I not present enough? What happened? But the thing is, even though the month was tricky in some ways, I invested as much as I could, where I could. But at the end, I just wasn’t attached. And that’s actually okay.
Even though God hasn’t used the countries or ministries to break my heart and change me, that doesn’t mean He hasn’t changed me at all. Here’s the thing, when I started this adventure, I was under the impression that I was okay. That I didn’t need to change. I mean, I wasn’t perfect, far from it, but I thought I was good. I liked myself (or at least I thought I did), and so when God began to suggest change to me, I resisted. I thought I could escape my past. I thought I could escape my problems back home. I thought the World Race would fix everything. If you resonate with those ideas, go ahead and do yourself a favor and evict them from your thinking. The World Race brought my past to the forefront. It just brought my problems back home right back into my present reality. I tried to resist, and maybe you will too, but you would do so much better to just give in to the change. In order to build my testimony, I had to dive into the past. I had to tell people things that I’d never told anyone before. Only then did I experience the ultimate acceptance, and that softened my heart. In Haiti, God brought my relationship with my little sister to the forefront. I wrote her a letter where I was completely real and raw with her about my life for the first time, ever. God has restored our relationship to one based on peace and understanding. He gave me His eyes for her. He gave me His love and compassion for her and He has changed my callous heart so that she is one of the people that I now love fiercely.
He has used my teammates to change my heart towards men, marriage, and friendship. Before the Race I had never really been able to look at a man without romanticizing him, but now I’ve learned how to have actual brother-sister-relationships with the men on my squad. He’s used feedback to show me how I can grow and change my character; how I can become a better me. One key piece of feedback I received that has changed my relationships is that I was really crappy at pursuing people. Since I’ve gotten that feedback, I’ve gotten so much better at it and have stronger relationships because of it. Overall, I feel like I have experienced twenty years of growth in these short five-and-a-half months. I am completely different than who I once was, and I’m sure at the end of this I’ll be different than who I am now. So God has been changing me, just in completely unexpected ways. It’s been an amazing process.
Stay tuned for my next blog: “Some Advice For Future Racers” and “Father’s Day: A Reprise”
FUNDING: I am currently at $11,658, which puts me at $4,592 away from my fully funded goal. The deadline is coming up in just two weeks and I could use all the help I could get to get there on time! Please consider giving; no amount is too big or too small. Thank you so much!
