When I tell people that I’m going on The World Race, the most common question is WHY? Why do you want to spend an entire year sleeping in a sleeping bag? The questions continue. Will you have your cell phone? Will you have wifi? You mean that you won’t know what you’re doing until you get to each country? Etc.
So – I thought it would be appropriate for my first World Race blog to share with you all just exactly why I have chosen to leave the United States for eleven months and travel to eleven different countries in July 2015.
As confusing as it may sound, I am not spiritually ready to share my testimony with everyone who could be reading. Even though I’ve healed and have moved on, I know that people that I am close to will be hurt by the truth. So, that will be shared in a blog later on – but I will share part of my story.
Growing up, I was very close to the Lord. I went to church every Sunday and was saved when I was 7 years old in Sunday school at Word of Faith. I remember my first communion – my cousin Tia and I were so afraid to drink the “blood” of Jesus because we actually thought it was blood. Silly us. My grandparents instilled any and every Christian belief in both of us – they made sure we were at church every Sunday, they disciplined us with spankings when we misbehaved, they practiced Bible verses with us and most importantly, taught us never to be ashamed of our faith.
When I was about 10, I started making preaching tapes on cassettes with one of those old recorders. I loved watching preachers on tv and wanted to grow up to be one. My favorites were Benny Hinn and Rod Parsley. I’ll never forget that when Benny Hinn came to Charlotte, the “old people” at my church got a group together to go – I went with them. My grandmother, who I call “Mawmaw” and her sister “Aunt Tish” both had prayer shawls that they always had with them at church. I wanted to be like them, so I began donating my allowance to Rod Parsley’s ministry so that I could have one for times of prayer.
Unfortunately, I began to get older and was exposed to alcohol, parties and boys. I was struggling with a lot in my immediate family and realized quickly that these things helped take my pain and sorrow away. I started straying away from Christ and all that I had known for 15 years.
There’s a lot to tell about the next 6 years of my life – but I’ll save that for the day I share my testimony, so I’ll sum it up in a few short sentences: During this time, I turned to drinking and partying, I skipped school, stayed with boys, lied to my parents, got into trouble and fell so far from Christ. Throughout all of it, I stayed in church, but my relationship with Christ had faded. I was ashamed of what I had done and where I had chosen to turn and didn’t feel worthy enough for Christ. Because of that, I kept straying farther and farther away. I was in all of the wrong relationships – in which I was sexually, physically, verbally and mentally abused time after time. But instead of turning to God for comfort and love, I turned to the ways of the world.
My junior year of college, I couldn’t handle the verbal abuse I was experiencing but had finally put a stop to over consuming alcohol, so I turned somewhere else. I began making myself throw up to ease the sting that the cruel and demeaning words had on my heart. Shortly after it started, it became something I did five to six times a day, causing me to lose almost 20 pounds in a very short period. I played softball at Appalachian State University and everyone noticed my weight and energy loss. My coaches began asking me questions and getting suspicious until I finally admitted what had been going on. I started seeing a counselor and decided that I had to make the best decision for myself – which was to cut off my relationship with the person who was causing so much pain, even though she was extremely close to me.
I began listening to KLove Radio during the process of recovery, and God found a way back in. It was a very challenging time for me, but God assured me that He was right there every step of the way. He restored my happiness, my strength, my confidence, my hope and my worth. I finally began waking up and feeling like I had a purpose in life, although I was totally unsure of what it was. To this day, KLove is the only radio station I listen to.
I graduated college in December 2014 and moved back home with my dad, as my parents had divorced years before, and worked as a reporter for a local newspaper, the Denver Weekly. I was given the opportunity to write about God and my faith, how much I admired my youngest sister, about the faith that I was surrounded in by my friends who had been faced with some of the most challenging struggles. I shared bits and pieces about my Mawmaw, who passed away on Oct. 9, 2011 after battling leukemia. God really opened the doors for me to publicly write about Him.
I loved so much about my job, but five months into it I started feeling like God was nudging me to do something else to glorify Him. I felt as if He was pushing me to share my story. Again, he opened the doors for me to work in ministry for 8 weeks of the summer – first on a mission trip to Kusi, Peru and then at The Vineyard, a Christian sports camp that I grew up going to. In Kusi, I shared my full testimony for the first time ever. During that time when I was sharing, God opened my eyes and showed me my purpose. He showed me that because He had completely saved me from the road of despair I had been traveling on, it was my turn to share that with people who have faced the same or similar things as I had. So, it became my strongest desire to share what God has done in my life – showering me with an abundance of forgiveness, grace and love – with the brokenhearted so that they may turn to God during dark times instead of turning to the alternatives as I did so many times.
When I returned home from my trip, life seemed much harder. I didn’t want to be home, I didn’t want to fall into my old ways, I was running from my reality. But I believe it’s all because I know that I am supposed to go out into this world and work for others, spread Christ’s love and show others what He can do for them. So, I prayed and prayed and prayed and once again, God answered my prayers. The World Race was His answer.
So that’s my answer to your question why? Because I have been called by my Savior to go.
Luke 14:25-33 says, “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ‘So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.'”
The meaning of this passage is that all of Christ’s disciples much 1) love their family less than they love Christ, 2) bear the cross and follow Christ and 3) relinquish everything. These things are the only way to show a full commitment to Christ. In the passage, “hate” is an expression for loving less than Christ. Bearing the cross expresses that a disciple must deny himself and die to self-will and embrace God’s will no matter what and follow Christ. The parabolic illustrations involving building and going to war are warnings not to be quick to make a decision to be a disciple, but to first count the cost to see if they will persevere in the faith. The end of the passage reiterates that in order to be a disciple, one must make the greatest sacrifices and follow His plan at all costs.
So, I will be leaving my family including my baby siblings who I adore so much and my kitten who has honestly become a real daughter to me; I will leave my comfortable bed to sleep outside in a sleeping bag on the ground for 11 months, I will not have texting or iMessage and sometimes may not have wifi or electricity for a month or more at a time, and I will not know what I will be doing until I arrive at each country because we will be following Gods path every step of the way.
With all of this being said, I am incredibly blessed to have this opportunity to share what God has done in my life with 11 different countries and countless numbers of people in this world. I will miss my family, my kitten, my bed, my friendships – but I am choosing to go so that I fulfill part of my purpose in life – and that is to make God known.
Please follow my journey on my blog as I prepare and then embark on The World Race. If you would like to support me financially, you can do so by clicking the “Support Me!” tab on the left column of this page.
Til next time,
Racquel
