I’ve been on the World Race for THREE months now! Time is flying. So much has happened. And I wish I could share every single detail with the whole world!
Over the weeks I have heard plenty of “You’re thriving”s and “The world race looks so amazing!”s! and yes! Honestly the race IS amazing! I really love it.
Some days we ride horses up volcanoes & roast marshmallows at the hotspots while lava stands literally 30 ft away. And some weekends we catch a bus to a black sand beach to camp for the weekend and to watch the sunrise. There are nights where we worship together and you can feel Holy Spirit move like a rush of wind. There are days where I have never laughed that much before. And days where I’m sure this has to be the best day of my whole life.
But there is so. much. more.
And honestly, some days are hard. Real hard.
There have been days where I started crying at dinner in front of all my friends. There have been nights I’ve cried in the shower and sat with my team on my bed after sobbing about something I had been avoiding feeling for 71 days (I counted). There have been so many days where I could feel my heart ache, over what the Lord is walking me through or over something I saw at ministry that day. There has been a whole lot of days when all I really want is a hug from my mom and a whole lot of mornings when I want nothing more than to get breakfast with my dad at Maple Street Biscuit Co. I miss calling my friends to see if they want to eat lunch at Miso’s or at White Duck. Some days I feel like I would do anything for chicken minis, or to be able to drive Blaise and all his friends around again on a Saturday night.
It’s a lot of heart work that the Lord has been doing for me the past couple months. I’ve walked through a fair amount of healing since I left home- the kind of healing that carves deep in your heart and scrapes all the black and parts away but at the same time gently nurses the bruised parts back to a pink color. The kind of healing that fills your heart to the brim with Truth after the dark parts have gone away. My view has changed on how to live my life, how to love other people, how to give grace to not only others but myself too. A lot of this heart work is hard and it’s heavy. And this is holy fire that is cleansing all of us deep down to the core.
I love the race a lot. I love it for different reasons than I thought I would love it for. It’s not about all the crazy adventures like camping on top of a volcano ( even though THAT’S COOL ) I love it because I live with 53 people who love the Lord so deeply. I love the World Race because I get to hear all these stories from every single corner of the Earth- stories that radiate the Glory, stories that break your heart into pieces, stories that bring community and draw people together. I love the race because it has put me in a place to change my perspective on every single thing- How to love people. How to handle relationships. Who God is. Who Jesus is. Who I am. What my future looks like. What happened in my past. How to love people who have hurt me. How to show people Jesus.
I am not going to come home the same person I was when I left. Days here are some of the best days of my life!! But most days I’ll still start crying when I think about landing back in America next June & running through the airport into my brothers arms to give them all the biggest hugs ever. The World Race is not easy; in fact, it might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but it is also one of the best things I’ve ever done.
-haven
