Since I got off the plane from being on the race I hit the ground running. From spending time with family through the holidays to getting a job and hanging out with friends on the weekend I “haven’t” had time to sit and process what I just did this past year, I “haven’t” had time to write thank you cards to everyone who supported me, I “haven’t” had time to see and spend time with the people I haven’t caught up with in a year, I “haven’t” had time to grieve the things I’ve see, heard and experienced while on the race, I “haven’t” had time to sit and think of all the fun experiences I had or the things that the Lord taught me and grew me in. I’ve been running since I got home so that I won’t have to deal with everything that went on in the last year because I don’t want to go through the hard stuff I don’t want to grieve, I don’t want to process, I don’t want to be asked what I’m going to next or what I’m doing in the future, I don’t want to realize the “fun” is over and Bryce is back in America. So I’m going to run.
Being home for two months now from the race, it all just feels like some realistic vivid dream that I had last night. The faces, the places, and some of the names I remember well but the details are quite blurred. I can remember playing soccer in the mountains of the Philippines with street boys but I can’t remember who scored goals, I can remember playing on a play ground in Zambia with some boys from the local neighborhood but I can’t remember what we talked about, I can remember sitting in feedback time but I can’t remember what feedback I got and how I learned from it and grew from it. All of this stuff are things I wish I would have remembered. That I wish I would have written down and stuff that I wish I would have stopped running in the moment to sit and write it down and thank God for, but I didn’t.
In these last couple of weeks, all of the things I’ve been trying to avoid have been catching up to me. I have felt like I just wanted to cry and scream cuss words at the top of my lungs, I haven’t wanted to go places because I feel disgusted with myself because I’m at the same weight I was before I left, I’ve lost countless hours of sleep coming up with ideas in my head about how people hate me because I haven’t written thank letters to people who have supported me. Yet I continued to run. Well guess what, I’m exhausted of running. I can’t go any further. It’s time to stop running and to deal.
I am not the same person I was when I left. So now it’s time to start acting like it. I have to grieve, I have to process and most importantly I have to write my thank you letters. The World Race wasn’t some vacation I got to spend 11 months doing but a season of change and growth, a time of pruning, but that time I can now see doesn’t stop but was a training on how to do it in your everyday life back in America.
It’s time to stop running and time to catch my breath. To process and see the fruits that I received from this last year and put them to work.
