I have been home for one month and I don’t know how to slow down. I don’t know how to “process”the last year. I don’t know how to get quiet. Going on the World Race was like pouring concrete over my feet and standing still long enough for it to solidify. And it does not make a lick of sense because I moved more in the last 11 months than I have in my whole 25 years. But the World Race took away a lot of the places I would run. Even though I was moving from place to place, I felt planted and the buzz of activity and technology and expectations began to fade away. It forced me and dropped my miles per hour from 217 in America to about 32 in the rest of the world. It separated me from a lot of my distractions and put me in a room with nothing to do but be in intentional community, go to ministry, hang out with Jesus and look at my cinder block feet. Sure, I was busy, doing a lot; I did not go on the World Race to be lazy. It was hard work. And God moved mountains and was glorified. But it required me to be 100% present and focused, to be fully awake and to really really really trust and listen to the Holy Spirit. Sleeping on buses and trains and crappy vans with dark grey exhaust and visiting 17 countries in 11 months was the most “still” I have felt in my whole life. Talk about a contradiction.
And then I stepped off that plane in Boston. And I felt the high of things I am use to; English, Starbucks, clean bathrooms that you can flush toilet paper in, phone apps that solve all your problems like “what time is that movie or how did it rate on Rotten Tomatoes?”, enough mind numbing entertainment to keep me from thinking about my own life for years, transportation that is reliable and convenient, food that will not give you explosive diarrhea (with the exception of Five Guys). All the things I had been missing all year. And I walked away from my cinder block shoes thinking “Oh, yeah. I got this.” I think I subconsciously had a game plan of what re-entry would look like, “I am going to love my family and friends well and they will see all the Jesus in me and how the World Race has changed me for the good. I am going to have deep quiet times and let the Lord carry me. I am going to be self-disciplined and chose Jesus over my family and all my friends and all the ways people need me. I can do this and it is going to be great!”
Epic fail.
I think the moment I stepped off that plane and stepped out of those shoes that made me be still, I started running. I stretched my muscles, feeling the strength that had grown there, and took off. Puffed up in my own confidence of all that I had learned and all the ways I was going to be victorious and all the wisdom and all the Jesus that I was going to bring to everyone I encountered. I ran towards all those things that I am comfortable with and all those things that I “deserve” to get to indulge in after 11 months away. And in one month of being back, I realize that somehow I am back to being the same little girl that started the race believing that she could do things in her own strength. If I am honest I knew I was falling back into that old self-reliance and people pleasing after just 48 hours on American soil. This is just the first time I have had the guts to admit it.
I feel like for the past month I have been in a room filled with treadmills. Each turned in a different direction and going a different speed. And I could jump from one to the other, change my footfalls to match the pace and then when I needed to, when I got bored or felt like I had done enough at that speed, I could tactfully step onto another and acclimate. I am always in motion. This is how our culture functions. We don’t know how to be still. And even if I was on a slower moving treadmill there is still the fact that the whole room is filled with moving equipment and the roar of the rubber going around numbs my brain until all I can do is drool and focus on my feet and tell myself I will be still soon and press the “cool down” button. Tomorrow, or next week after that family vacation or after I start that new job. Soon.
Soon came today, more than a month after I got back into the country. A day I put on the calendar three weeks ago to “be still”. That day circled in red that I told myself, “Ok, things are crazy, but this is the checkpoint at which I am going to stop running and take a breather.” And oh, how I have dreaded this moment. Because three weeks ago, marking that day out gave me permission to put off every deep and uncomfortable thought until I absolutely had to face it. Everything that I knew the Lord was holding me responsible for or having to walk out the gifts He put in me or the things He really had taught me on the Race, all of it went into the bin labeled “The Tuesday I will get my life in order and become an inspirational well-thought out person”.
So I showed up at Starbucks, inspired by Pumpkin Spice and thoughts of how deep and moving my writing will be and how I imagine myself to be this well put together person with smooth edges and a bow tied perfectly in my smooth hair. And a harsh reality hits. I don’t know how to be still or how to push the “Cool Down” button, and I really don’t have smooth edges at all or a bow but rather bulging pants from a year of eating rice and frizz from the hair that is finally growing back that fell out all over Asia. I want to pop out profound blogs and tell all the stories I have waited till I had time or good enough internet to tell (excuses?). And all I can do is cling to the same three worship songs and check Facebook and hope that someone else texts me and gives me a reason to avoid this a little longer.
And I realize that this is going to be a process, all of this processing. It is not going to just be that one Tuesday marked in red. And that it won’t be easy. Because I have to face myself and all the things I have been running from. And just like everything with Jesus, it will require me to get dirty, bloodied a little bit along the way. It will require me to be all in and to not numb myself with business or Facebook or Netfilx or even other people’s needs. It will take courage. But it will be profound and beautiful and so worth it. It will be LIFE. Awake and alive (crazy how God wants us to actually live awake huh? He asks so much!) And it will force me to actually apply all the things that He taught me on the Race. I know I have it in me, because I am God’s daughter and He will equip me with whatever I need.
I am realizing that the concrete shoes that I wore all Race long were just training sneakers. Equipping me for what was ahead and how God wanted me to live my life. How life was meant to be lived all along; abundantly. My concrete shoes were a simulation of “being still” and “standing on rock” so that when I returned to native soil, after stumbling about for a bit, my feet would eventually be set on finding rock again and planting themselves.
So I guess what I'm saying is that this is just the beginning and that I still have a lot to learn. And that it has all come full circle and even standing in the same spot, everything has changed. And I can't pretend like nothing happened. I have some processing to do, stories to share and thoughts to think that don’t even connect or make sense at this point. But I have to start somewhere. And today, Tuesday, in this chair at this very normal Starbucks looks like a good place to me.
I'll keep you posted. 
Swaziland, where I would spend every night just drinking in the African sunset.
