Ever since I can remember, I’ve gravitated towards movies, TV shows, stories, and video games that depict a quest. Before I was six years old, I had already clocked countless hours of my childhood in front of the family TV set, watching my older siblings, cousins, and occasionally even my dad direct the squatty little blobs of pixelated color into castles, forests, mountains, villages, and dungeons to encounter villains that would put the hero’s wits to the test and extract every last ounce of cunning and strength he had to obtain victory.
In those days, I think most games came in the form of a hero roaming foreign terrain and finding enemies all along the way. The more he conquered the opposition, the more the landscape changed, becoming more unknown as the quest plunged him through stranger worlds and harder levels. Since I was too young to handle the complexities of some of these challenges, I spent most of my early years just watching. I soaked in all the dangers that accosted Link, Mega Man, Simon Belmont, and Mario at every turn. Levels accumulated and opposition mounted, and I jumped around in victory when a stage boss was defeated or squealed when the boss defeated us. I was really into this, if you couldn’t already tell.
I found myself being drawn more and more into this idea as I grew older. My favorite movies were about characters going on a search for something important, something vital to restore peace in the land, or something needed in order to gain personal victory. When I was in high school, I discovered anime, which depicts the most laboriously long, twisting, extensive and exhaustive quests imaginable. For example, the entire Dragonball series spans 508 twenty-minute episodes and follows the life of the hero, Goku, from the age of 12 to 152. I was absorbed and more than obsessed with this for years (because it really took about that long to see it all). Towards the end of college, I discovered LOST. You get the picture.
My love of the quest wasn’t just about the adventure. It wasn’t all about the danger, or the changing scenery, or the discoveries, of the mismatched band of people that would have never been thrown together for any other reason; neither was it all about what was lost, or what was gained. It wasn’t solely about doing the unconventional thing, roughing the elements, or finding new friends and allies along the way. And yet, it wasn’t about obtaining the thing that was being pursued, either. Because, after watching the perils and the pitfalls and the setbacks and the breakthroughs occur, I was sure there would be no appeal had the goal been reached simply by walking in and taking it. There needed to be opposition, large defeats and small victories, shared by people who’s sole witness verified the struggle was worth what they got in the end. What they all got in the end.
I think that what I loved the most, that arrested my heart and mind and spirit, was the idea of being pitted against hardship and overcoming every trial with the help of those around me to gain something none of us could have grasped alone. There had to be strength from more than just the hero, there had to be a purpose greater than any danger that could come, there had to be an inner transformation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, there had to be a pulsing urgency to push through the war and supernatural favor to even survive the day.
In short, the quest wasn’t about a hero doing it on his own. It was about the shared adventure, being carried by others’ strength and carrying them when they had exhausted theirs, all for a purpose greater than themselves, greater than even the group as a whole.
Maybe that’s why I felt so pulled towards the World Race. The same night I heard of it, I applied. I needed a supernatural miracle to even get to a place where I would be able to go. My one prayer for the months in between acceptance and fundraising and launch was this: God, you know me better than anyone else, and you know that something inside of me will break if I don’t get to go and I’ll never be the same.
I went. And I’ll still never be the same.
All those ideas and storylines became a reality for me.
The World Race was the quest of my life.
Adventure on three continents, danger in many forms, traveling eastward from my doorstep and returning to it westward, a mismatched group of people learning to get one another’s backs in love, the losses and gains, unconventional and nomadic living, roughing it, leaving my heart along the way with places and people I’d have never seen otherwise.
In Mississippi, I left it all, in which I had invested much of my time but little of my heart, because my heart was so burdened with the artificial and the meaningless that it had little authenticity to offer anyone. With nothing left to lose I closed my eyes, jumped, and took the plunge, placing my fear on the line, hoping I wouldn’t hit the ground and shatter. I didn’t find a safety net, because I wasn’t always safe; I didn’t find a giant pillow, because it wasn’t always comfortable; and I didn’t find a trampoline, because it was impossible to bounce back from the world that wrecked mine. Falling, I crashed many times, hitting my knees and holding my chest like my heart would explode from all the emotional wars, physical pain, and spiritual detox. As I continued to hurtle further and further towards the impending ground, often all I could do was crush my eyes shut and pray that if I did survive the fall, there’d be enough of me left to function. If I did live through the jump I had bravely and foolishly made, that I could live to believe in God again, that I would be able to breathe and eat and even walk after the recovery, that I would be able to have enough faith left to take another jump again, even if He didn’t catch me.
The crashes were devastating, and the collisions destroyed me. But as I walked through a world of people filled with battle scars, I began to understand why my monumental jump had me careening into hurt after hurt, break after break, bruise after bruise. All of a sudden, I wasn’t the coddled weakling I had seen in myself, I was no longer the Buddha behind the wall, unaware of the pain and suffering outside the castle gate. I was a part of Christ’s sufferings, He was my remedy for the the world’s hurt and for my own. I stood in war-torn Gulu and spoke about my most private battles and debilitating pains and the redemption I found for those wounds. I broadcast my scars of abuse and death over a microphone for the whole town to hear… And women, with scars of abuse and death, ran and threw themselves on the ground at my feet, crying and asking for this love to cover the pain and vacancy of life.
I became alive in a new way. In the spirit. The spiritual world became more real to me than the physical, God’s voice more audible than those around me. If he told me to get off the bus, I did. And when I didn’t know what to do next, I asked Him where I should go. When He told me to walk down a certain road, I did. And then I found a Muslim man who had prayed to Jesus I would walk down that same road on that same day so He could learn more about this Jesus, if He did, indeed, have the power to answer prayers. Lifting the name of Jesus higher than my own took a new meaning, as I found myself so excited to spread the exhilarating news of His miracles that I found myself telling strangers about Him before I even introduced my own name.
More than just a physical quest, the World Race was a spiritual quest. A pilgrimage into the world, myself, and the heart of a relentless God. It was an opportunity to embrace those who had never felt two arms wrap around them before, assuring that the first time was in the name of Jesus, who has wrapped His arms around their downtrodden spirits all their lives without name. It led me outside of myself, pushing to something greater, something higher than just me, or team Olur or J-Squad or the World Race. It led me to the face of God, who has a sprawling, daring, unpredictable, invigorating, empowering, transformative epic quest of truly Biblical proportions ahead for any heart that seeks to completely lose theirs within His.
As I said, the plunge I took into this journey was not rife with safety nets or goose-down pillows. But I, like the orphaned masses and forgotten beggars, felt the arms of my Father around me as I fell deeper into the journey. And though that doesn’t stop the pain of the impacts, it reassures me that I will supernaturally survive each subsequent crash with the complete and total presence of the one who loves me enough to fulfill me with a worldwide, lifelong quest into more of Him.
