How often do we delude ourselves? How many times do we neglect the truths we feel deep inside of us because we are not aware enough? A lot of times we do not even realize that we are unaware of the status of our own lives.
Last Monday, one of the base staff members, Junior, taught on the idea of false masks. The masks are the areas of our lives where we don’t know our own truths. During this teaching I realized that in order to succeed at making our lives into a true reflection of God’s glory and His kingdom then we have to be as self-aware as possible.
We can beat these masks by choosing to be vulnerable and honest and genuine. Vulnerability is not a weakness it is a strength. We have to be brutally honest with others that we trust but also with ourselves. Our actions and interactions have to be genuine and intentional, and for me personally, I want to start by making this blog as genuine and as intentional as a I can.
I am going to finish this blog by writing out a list of truths regarding my personal experience with the race. These truths are going to be a mixture of good and bad, funny and serious, successes and failures, but more importantly all of these things are going to be genuine and most are going to be things that I probably would not have shared without being provoked.
- The race has been probably the best experience of my life so far. I genuinely love my 3-ish months so far. A big reason for that is the awesome experience of adventure and fun that you see in the advertisements for the race, but the discomfort and discipleship aspect of the race is what’s been more important to me.
- A lot of times I look more forward to our down time hanging out at the base than I do our ministry.
- Confession: I was totally gluttonous with our team’s Halloween candy.
- I told myself and other people that I would make videos on the race, but I haven’t. (Well in fairness I made one but it made my computer crash so I gave up after that)
- I was always confident that I was an introvert before the race, but now I’m not sure.
- Sometimes I wonder if Guatemala and the base here has given me too many comforts when I designated the race to be a time in my life where I grew from discomfort. I am also worried about how I will react when bases in future countries do not have those same comforts.
- Some of the other guys and I dressed up as “your mom” for Halloween.
- At launch someone spoke over me that I have trouble accepting God’s love which was preventing me from ministering to my full potential. It was true and I have grown in that area, but I am realizing that I am going to have to keep working to improve in that for the rest of my life.
- I have become a lot more comfortable stepping up and speaking hard truths into other people’s lives.
- I am constantly torn between the feeling that I am having too much contact with people from home and the feeling that I should be texting people from home more. It is a battle between “being present in the moment” vs. “trying to take ownership and improve my relationships”
- The race has been so good to me that I am terrified of life after the race.
- I learned that I am so much harder on myself than I should be. God gives me an ocean of grace, but all too often I only give myself fractions of grace.
- I can definitely be a better steward of my money.
- In a way, I have started to idolize my favorite/good foods and have been too willing to splurge on meals at some points.
- Some teachings have challenged minor aspects of my theology and I’ve had to work to discover what my beliefs about these things really are. For a lot of those aspects I still haven’t put the work in and I still don’t know where I come down on them.
- I am proud of my team for the growth and the work we’ve done in ministry.
- I have learned that I am terrible at recognizing and voicing my emotions and my insecurities.
- The community on the race is an incredible blessing. I have never experienced people pouring out love like this before, and I have never been this comfortable giving my love to other people.
- I have become a coffee drinker since starting the race even though I have said before that I never wanted to be a coffee drinker.
- It has been easy to look forward to what’s coming and not be present in the moment.
- I would say that, in general, I have become more confident because of the race. A part of me hates saying that and I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing.
- Some days, ministry seems like way more of an obligation than it does something I get to do out of love. That is a perspective I know I need to work to change when it comes up.
- I can be lazy about opportunities to minister on off days or even after ministry hours.
- It is hard to be genuine when people ask me how my race is going because I have no idea how to best describe my experience.
- I don’t really miss home or even people from home that strongly and there is some guilt there.
- One of my main reason for coming on the race was to grow and change because I didn’t really like the person I was. Now I do not think disapprovingly of the person I am, but instead I think excitedly of the person God wants me to become.
