I have had a sleepover with the same four girls for the last five months. We’ve been a team for even longer than that. I have seen each one of them “ugly cry.” I know which one shouldn’t drink coffee because it might make her a little loopy. I know which one would prefer to be woken up for a beautiful sunrise in lieu of sleep. I know which one I can count for a bandaid or some advil, and I know which one will sing country music at the top of her lungs with me.
We have lived literally every day together for 178 days. Day in, day out, every single one of them. We know every quirk and every childhood story about each other. These women are both my friends and my sisters. I have been shaped and refined by each of them,the way a beautiful painted canyon is slowly etched into layers of rough rock through time, diligence, and relentlessness.
We’re over halfway through the World Race. This week, the inevitable came: team changes. After six months together, Team Echo has come to the end of our road and it was time to be placed with new teammates to continue learning, growing, and polishing.
They told us we had to grieve our old teams. I didn’t entirely know what that meant. Honestly, I kind of thought it was just some flowery jargon we would all skip over. It’s not like I wasn’t going to see these women again—we will still travel together, hang out at debriefs, and even be partnered together in ministry at times. Nobody has died.
How do you grieve people who are still in the room with you?
As soon as they read the names of my new team, my heart fell. Not because I don’t love the women on my new team—they are all wonderful Godly women—but because in the blink of an eye, my team became my “old team,” and the race would never be the same. I walked away in a daze, walked up to my room, and cried. I couldn’t hold myself together.
(Side note: You may think from reading my blogs that all I do is cry. I assure you that’s not the case.)
I was shocked by my reaction. My mind spun out of control with all the things I was going to miss. I was hit with the truth that these women that know everything about me are no longer mine, as if I ever had any kind of ownership of them. I was instantly jealous of their new teams, and all I could think about was that surely they would replace me and have no need for my friendship anymore (an ugly, flat-out lie).
A general loneliness settled over me. I know it sounds silly. Whereas I had been surrounded by women who knew everything about me, I now was at the point of having to start over from square one as my former teammates carried on without me. I cried a lot that day…and the day after. It felt like a breakup where you end up at the same party the next day and have to exchange forced smiles as you move on with your new life (okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic.)
They are still here. They will always be here. Still, the grief has been real. It has taken days and so many raw conversations to fully process that this chapter has ended and it is a gift to have the opportunity to move onto the next. No, they will not replace me, just as I know each one of them to be absolutely irreplaceable.
I loved my first team. They will be tough to beat. However, I’ve come to realize that it would be a shame to only have the privilege of really knowing, deeply, four or five other women, when there are fifty other beautiful souls on this squad. I know I will look back in just a few short weeks with a heart bursting with love for the six new friends on my new team as I begin to learn the intricacies of their spirits and who they are. We have already exchanged more laughs than I could even begin to count.
Change is hard, but change is necessary and good. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for everything—a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. It might even say something about World Race team changes, but I’m not sure.
To Bekah, Brooke, Ellie, Meredith, and Omayra: Thank you for being my sisters and walking this adventure with me for 178 days. You have been a gift.
To Toni, Mariana, Hendricka, Taylor, Betsy, and Hannah: I am so excited for what’s next. We’ve got a good thing here and all kinds of new things ahead of us. Let’s run this race. It’s time to dance.
