Who am I to say that the life I have been given, is not one I want to live?
Who am I to tell God that He has messed up and doesn’t know what He is doing?
Who am I be make excuses for why I shouldn’t take a year off from school to preach to the nations? To be uncomfortable. To be stretched and shoved out of my comfort zone. To simply, go.
When He made us, He made us for a purpose. Something that we were meant to do, that while others may have a similar purpose, none are exactly like our own.
Our timelines only cross with others’ for mere moments. Moments that sometimes are too short, or that at other times, we wish to end. Whichever it may be, it is up to us to do the most with the time we have.
When I was a freshman in high school, my youth pastor asked all of us this question: “If you could do one thing for the rest of your life, and never have to worry about bills or anything like that, what would you do?”
Everyone took their turn around the room and gave their answers, and they were what you would expect out of a group of high school students.
“Own a ranch”
“Be a racecar driver”
“Live in a mansion and be rich”
The answers were things that could be obtained, but if you knew the kids I was sitting with, you’d know they were really far fetched. The answers continued around the room, and I was the last to go. While everyone listed things they wanted that could kinda pass as a job or hobby, mine was unconventional.
“Missions” I said.
And I was completely serious. I have always loved going on missions, and while I may not be the best or get super excited about manual labor for a week, I love the trips where you get to know people and walk in their shoes, for even a short time. They were the weeks that I never wanted to end. Yet, they always did.
Fall of my junior year, I stumbled across Adventures in Missions, when trying to find out if there was a longer term mission trip that I could go on (and that my parents wouldn’t find too sketchy). At first I only saw the full race. Ya know, the 11 countries in 11 months race. The one you can’t do until you’re 21. The one that even now, I’m still 28 months too young to go on. So I made plans. I was going to finish high school and college, and then do the Race. If only you could’ve seen the spreadsheets I made that showed these plans, they’re crazy. I never even noticed that AIM had a Gap Year trip, because that’s not what I was looking for.
Fast forward to December of my senior year.
So, apparently when you take too many Dual Credit courses, you can graduate early. I already knew that I wanted to enroll in the community college’s EMT academy (a dream of mind I’d had since I was 12), but the school didn’t want to let me leave campus two days a week to go. Instead, they had me rush to take an online semester of environmental science (which I still know NOTHING about) and kicked me out of the doors two weeks later. (I’m really not kidding when I say that I didn’t know I’d be graduating early until it happened. It was absolutely crazy.)
With nothing to do on Christmas break, somehow I found myself staying up and watching vlogs from present or former racers, and reading blogs of those who had been. (One of which was the blog of my sweet friend, the lovely Kayla Zilch.. If you have a moment, swing by her site. She is such a talented writer.) Day and night, I was thinking about the race.
As time went on, I became unhappy wherever I was. School. Home. With friends. Even church. Time out. I want to make clear that there was nothing wrong with my church, the problem was with me. Everywhere that I tried to put myself, I was unhappy with. It was a holy discontent if you will. I was restless and couldn’t sleep. I always wanted to be somewhere else. I remained that way until at a weekend retreat, God told me what I had been wanting to hear, but did not want to admit that I needed.. He told me to “Go”. And to be honest, I said “no” for almost a month before I gave in.
You see, He made me and He knows me. He knows what I need, even before I need it. He let me be restless so that I would realize that life is not just an 8-5 kind of thing. That their are people out in the world that have never heard of Him. And that I was made to GO to them. To meet them where they are. And to do life with over 40 other kids my age (okay yes we are all actually adults but let’s be real. It doesn’t feel that way) for 9 months.
Because, who am I to say “No”?
Who am I to turn away this gift, in the form of the Race, that He has given to me?
Who am I to tell Him that this is not what I need in my life, in this moment?
Who am I?
