**first I want to say I haven’t had the internets for a while so I apologize for the mass blog posts you guys are about to get. Some of them I wrote 3 weeks ago. and to update you guys also Shannon is feeling much better. Thank you for your prayers.
I’ve read more books these past 4 months then all last year and I’m loving it. One book being Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I had tried to read it before the race back home, but never could get into it. I now know it was because God wanted me to read it during this season of my life. this book is hilarious. go to half price books right now. go… and buy it.
One passage I read said:
“So much of what I know about getting along with people I learned from [living with] the hippies. They were a magical community. People were drawn to them. They asked me what I loved, what I hated, how I felt about this or that, what sort of music made me angry, what sort of music made me sad. they asked me what I daydreamed about, what I wrote about, where my favorite places in the world were. They asked me about high school and college and my travels around America. they loved me like a good novel, like an art film, and this is how I felt when I was with them, like a person John Irving would write. I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked. I had always been so conscious of those things, but living with the hippies I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more. I gained an interest in people outside my own skin. They were greater than movies to me, greater than television. The spirit of the hippies was contagious. I couldn’t get enough about Eddie’s ballerina girlfriend or Owen’s epic poems. I would ask them to repeat stories, because to me, they were like great scenes in favorites movies. I cannot tell you how quickly these people, these pot-smoking hippies, disarmed me.”
this is something I have come to appreciate on the race. A little lesson that sneaks by you that you don’t realize God has shown you. If I take back home only one thing from the race (which is impossible of course I realize this) it would be the lesson of losing myself.
I have had many days on the race when I’m going to bed and i think to myself “what exactly did I do today to make an impact for the Kingdom?” these are the days when I remember the conversations I had with people. even though they may seem like nothing, they weren’t. I have learned so much about the importance of love. Of preferring others over yourself.
I can honestly say I love living out of a backpack with only a weeks worth of clothes (okkk maybe a week and a half worth because I have too many articles of clothing I know this) but why you say? because I no longer care what I am wearing, honestly. This is just a small example to a much bigger idea. The idea of not only putting others first, but the truth of your thoughts being more about others. loving others over yourself not only in your actions, but in your mind. Don’t get me wrong, I am not perfect, I still have selfish thoughts daily. But I love the way Miller words it:
“I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more.”
I have lost my possessions but gained:
-the value in listening.
-the beauty of good friends.
-relationships I will always cherish even if I may never get to see them again.
-happiness in people and not material items.
-prayer warriors around the world
-intimacy with our Father
As I’m going into month four of the race, this thought excites me. That I have so many more relationships to form and so much more to learn about losing myself.
