When I left home on Jan 8th, I wasn’t ready for the World Race. I was confident I was ready to leave because by this point I was a pro at leaving home for extended amounts of time. In the past 2 years, I hadn’t been home for more than 9 months at a time. I was familiar with AIM as I was leaving on one of their trips for the third time, so I thought I had this in the bag. What was leaving again? Granted it was for 11 months this time, but thats just a few longer than 4 right? That’s what I convinced myself as I packed up my life for the next year and put on my happy face. I was happy, I might even go as far to say that I was excited for the race. The race started, they sent us to Mozambique, and all of that changed.
In an email I sent a friend, I described month one as “a huge processing party. It was literally one thing after the other, and I felt like I just couldn’t catch a break. I was completely boggled down with feelings and emotions and it sucked.” By the end of Mozambique, I was questioning my time on the race and how much more I could handle. I was so ready to throw in the towel. I talked about it a little with one of my squad leaders and she asked me to promise her that I wouldn’t leave. I promised her, but at debrief, I was ready to break a promise. It’s not like I signed a contract for that or anything. I was over the race, my team, my squad, and hearing phrases like “press in”, “feedback”, and so on. I didn’t want to talk to another person about what I was going through because it seemed like I couldn’t even figure it out myself. All I knew was that to me, it seemed like everyone was progressing and I was digressing, and that’s not what I signed up for. I signed up for change, that wasn’t happening, and I was pissed.
I had a one on one with my squad coaches, and when I began to describe my month, they stopped me when I said I was “processing” a lot that month. They told me that instead of processing, I was deflecting. They straight up slapped me in the face…how dare them? When those words came out of their mouths, I gave them one of my famous eye rolls and immediately went into defensive mode. Not something you want to hear when you’re already mad at the world. I tried to tune out what they were saying, but I heard it loud and clear. I was deflecting. Deflecting what God was telling me the deeper issue at hand was. There were some things I needed to address with my past that I tried to cover with the smaller things. Granite, the small things are important, but I used those to mask the bigger ones. Bigger issues I not only wasn’t ready to deal with, issues I would rather not deal with. I sat through the rest of our convo focusing on the word deflecting. We talked about other things too, but I couldn’t shake that word.
Coming into Swaziland, I knew that something had to change, and it had to be me. I received some tough words at debrief that I knew were out of love, so I decided to take them to heart. I came into Swazi wanting a complete 180 from Mozambique. I knew that I had the power to make that happen, so I dove in. I decided to start loving my team, to extend more grace to my squad, and serve people better. I declared that this month for me personally would be a month of forgiveness, growth, new things, complete surrender, trust, openness, and release. I realized that I was doing my race for me instead of with God.
I am happy to announce that since I took those steps, things have happened. A lot of people have commented about how they see a change in me. I’m happier here than I was in Mozambique. I love my team and there’s been a big shift in our team dynamics as well. I’m stepping into things God has for me, and I’m building confidence in the gifts he’s given me. I realized also that in order for God to fill me with the things I ask, I need to empty myself of all the crap so He has room to give me more. I’m emptying myself, and you know what? It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
