Right about now I still feel like I’m on the race, writing a blog at midnight from my airbnb apartment in Italy. Being in a new place with new currency and still feeling like I actually know what I’m doing. I’m 6,000 miles from home and can only talk to my family during the 5 hour time slot when we’re all awake. The race taught me how to pack light and find myself in the most peculiar situations!
The world race didn’t change my life. Traveling to 11 countries didn’t change my life. Walking around not being able to understand 11 different languages didn’t change my life. Adventure days didn’t change my life. What did change my life was the Lord’s sovereignty, grace, love, restoration, healing, and mercy. And the World Race set the atmosphere for that to be possible.
I know I started the race hungry. All I came to the race for was to pour out, to serve, and to give. I wasn’t expecting some huge change in myself. I wanted to do something and I said yes to a very expensive insane “something”. I was in for a huge surprise. When I began to reflect on the year and where the Lord had taken me over the course of the race, that unexpected changed happened— I saw it slowly ease its way into the way I lived my life. That hunger changed me.
A month ago I returned to Gainesville, Georgia where it all began. 15 months after my own training camp, I was on the other side of the process. Instead of camping, doing team builders, participating in squad wars, eating on the floor, and getting to know my new squad— this time I was still camping, but facilitating team builders, watching my new squad dominate, eating real food at a real table, praying over this new group of young people and sharing parts of my race with my new squad that in 2 months I will lead into the first 5 months of THEIR race. Perception changed me.
Looking back at how teams are formed, my mind always is in disbelief that my training team decided to place me in leadership. Such awe because I know myself to be a completely new person after returning from my race. The person who showed up at training camp has been completely replaced by a woman who saw the world in a new way. Time changed me.
I had people believe in me before I even believed in myself. I had a training team who sought the Lord and knew I would succeed in leadership. I had a God who knew people would follow me throughout a yearlong journey. Leadership changed me.
Seven months into my race I was submerged by parents on either side of me into a swimming pool in Thailand. I was surrounded by my entire squad and their parents, vowing to leave the person who came to Asia in the pool I stood in, leaving as a woman who promised to declare His goodness always. My baptism changed me.
The World Race taught me obedience in a way I’ve never been able to surrender to in my life. Halfway through the race I heard so distinctly the Lord asking me to share the deepest, darkest part of my testimony with my parents when they would visit six weeks later. Only after telling them what still gave me nightmares, the abuse of my early teen years, would I allow them to baptize me. Obedience changed me.
Over the course of the race I was able to completely be myself. My squad became every element of my life— my roommates, coworkers, friends, family, dates, adventure mates, walking companions, wrestling partners, prayer warriors, and my church. I was challenged by my peers. I was questioned in my actions and held accountable when tired. I was encouraged and loved in depths I cannot put into words. People changed me.
You see the 11 month mission trip in itself didn’t change me. The World Race didn’t change me. But placing my hands out willing to be obedient to what the Lord asked, to go places that scared me, to tell people things they didn’t want to hear, to love people when it was hard, that’s where the change came. The change wasn’t the stamps in my passport, but the people I encountered both before leaving on my trip and the countless amount of people I prayed for and got to tell part of my story to.
The change came from being Laura, to becoming Lo— a woman of prayer, a woman who fights for the people around her, and who loves because she knows she is loved by the Most High God.
