This blog is long overdue. I have prayed and thought about what I would write since being back in America. I wish I could write a blog and tell you that re-entry has been easy and every minute I have seen God do huge things.
I can’t.
I wish this blog was about the next big journey I was going on.
It isn’t.
Instead this blog is about what i walked away with from the race, I walked away with so much that I could write a 50 blog series about it. This particular heart lesson and life change though will be launches me into my next adventure. It is the life change He created for me all along. It is the plan he had worked together before I entered this world.
When I got on that plane in September 2013 to go to the Nations I was not in a good place. My mouth might have told you otherwise but my heart was barring the truth. I knew God I had given my life to him but I was pretty far from having a relationship with him.
I was an orphan.
I had an orphan heart to match my earthly situation. I didn’t have family, I didn’t even know how to accept love from a family, so accepting love from God, was completely foreign.
When I sat down on that plane God knew he had me right where He wanted me.
Over the course of the first 3 months, I battled a lot of emotions, I felt alone, and I was struggling with letting my team love me. This kind of love that the World Race community has is different than any other love I had ever experienced before, it is genuine, it is from the love of our Father, and it is never changing.
Right before I left for the race I had spent everyday with the Everett family, I knew my relationship with them was different but I had no clue that through my brokenness on the World Race he would use them in the ways that he did.
Over the course of the race I began to experience what it was like to have a personal and intimate relationship with God, I felt the weight of what Jesus did for ME on the cross. I fell in love with the way He loves me.
I began to truly understand that I wanted to dedicate my life and my being to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Even in the moments I wasn’t my most lovable He loved me with a love that never ends!
Walking away from the race I know with full confidence that He is my Father, He calls me chosen, He calls me beloved, He calls me DAUGHTER, and he looks on me with love.
The more I began to learn that, the more I began wanting to pour that love out to others, I wanted to accept them, forgive them, help them, love them. It made my ministry more effective because I was pouring out love that I understood what the source of my love was.
Over the course of my 11 month adventure with God he not only showed me what it was like to be his daughter, he showed me what it was like to be an earthly daughter.
My mom passed away when I was 7 and I have never lived with my father. I spent countless nights praying, begging, and pleading that he send me a family that would call me theirs. I prayed for years and never gave up hope. I dreamed about what having a mom would be like.
God began answering my prayers in 2011, but I had no clue.
In October 2011 I was running home from church one night, it was dark and kinda chilly. A lady in a silver altima stopped and asked me if I wanted a ride home, I had no clue who she was but I took her up on this offer (life in a small KY town). This lady and her family were new members at my church and I didn’t know her very well.
Over the course of the next year we started building a friendship, she was fun, we both liked to run, and she made me laugh.
When the next year came around I felt almost like we were sisters, I was eating dinner with her and her family almost every night. We did everything together, I babysat her twins, and she cared for me like no one had ever done before.
Our relationship was so different. It truly was a God ordained relationship. As I began preparing for the race she was with me every step of the way, she held my hand through the whole process of fundraising.
Her and her husband took me to GA to meet with my squad to launch to the nations. When she drove off and left me there with what would be my family for this journey. I knew that our relationship was so much deeper than we had ever thought.
This was the prayer God was and had been answering. This is my family.
It doesn’t make sense, I am 24 they are in their 30’s. Everything they are and everything I am is totally opposite. We don’t even like the same food. I am super relational and mushy they are totally not. They main glue that holds us together some days is Jesus that dwells in us.
My whole life I have prayed for family. My view of family was a scene from a Disney channel movie. Family is messy and hard but so worth it. Not everyday is sunshine and rainbows, some days there are rain clouds. Our love for each other is strong, its unbreakable, it is completely crafted and hand picked by God to work.
Even before I felt the love of being a daughter to the most high or the daughter of 2 Godly and wonderful parents, I was being pursued and chosen for this. God knew I would be in a hammock in the Philippines when it would all come together for me.
So, the race taught me a lot. It taught me how to love better, be more confident in my calling, live a life dedicated to His glory. It taught me what team means. Re-entry is teaching me even more on how to apply all that I have learned to my life…
The best part of this whole adventure and my adoption story isn’t just that I gained earthly parents who love me and care about me, it’s that I am confident that I am a beloved and chosen child to my Heavenly Father.
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
Ephesians 1:4-5
