Anticipation

In my first few days and weeks home from the Race, I admittedly hated all the questions I received.

“How was your trip?”

-“Well, first of all, it wasn’t just a ‘trip’,” my inner monologue would begin.

“Soo how was it?!”

-“Uh, good? Can you sum up your year in a single word?”

After some time and many instances of biting my tongue, I realized the real reason why these questions bothered me so deeply: I wasn’t ready for the Race to be over. Though I spent so much time preparing for and thinking about returning home to America and what would come next for me, I wasn’t ready to let go of the best season and experience of my life thus far. My first few days, and to be honest my entire first month back home, I felt like I was walking around in a daydream. Everything felt foreign and somehow wrong.

Brutal, uncomfortable honesty and vulnerability is what I did best on the Race so here we are again where I’ll quit sugarcoating and be all too real about how I’m really doing. As I’ve shared before, this transition home has been difficult. More than that, as much as I grew in the last year; as much as I broke barriers, found freedom, shattered insecurities, dropkicked lies from the enemy, reached a new level of intimacy with the Father, and completely redirected and transformed my heart, mind, and definition of my purpose in life, despite all of these profound moments of glory and celebration, this present season has felt like backsliding more than anything. I’ve felt defeated. I’ve felt small, not myself, unsure, and displaced. My heart has ached for all I saw and experienced this year. My heart has ached for the state of my own home country and just how ignorantly the majority of Americans (myself included) live. I’ve been overwhelmed. I’ve felt like giving up. I’ve wanted to run back to the mission field, not for the right reasons with a heart to serve, but instead as an escape. I’ve been discontent, begging the Lord to take me anywhere than exactly where I am, the exact place I just spent much of the last year fervently praying for. I’ve been frustrated with myself for losing focus, for falling short time and time again. I’ve forgotten about grace. I’ve forgotten the simplicity of the gospel. I’ve longed for busyness thinking I can please and glorify the Lord better through more works. I’ve hidden my heart. I’ve felt way too much. 

I came off the Race to an unexpected sequence of events and news in my family and in my life. There have been many times to celebrate; to laugh and to love, and there have been many times to grieve; to process, to be still and to cling to promises of goodness to come. I’ve faced a rejection that hit me a lot harder than I could have anticipated. I’ve questioned the transformation and the work in me in the last year. My heart and mind have been in just about every state possible in the last few weeks and I’ve tried really, really hard to wrap it all up in a nice bow to present this new version of myself I’m supposed to be. The truth is yes I’ve changed, yes I’ve grown, yes the Lord is still good and I can’t believe what He’s done with my life and what He’s still doing. But none of that defines who I should be and how I should act or look or feel. I still have bad days. I still get upset and feel broken sometimes. Social media still leads me to comparison and comparison still leads me to feelings of inadequacy. I still don’t feel that I’m enough 100% of the time, enough for the Lord, for those I love, for myself, and for those I want to be in my life. I still have this vision of who I want to be and she still feels really far away. I still worry that I’m falling behind, that at 22 years old my pace in life is somehow slowing down while others are at a sprint and still gaining speed. I still struggle with a very American pride and need for a desirable image. I still want to be who people want me to be, not who the Lord has called me to be.

Last week, one of my favorite worship artists Bryan and Katie Torwalt released an EP, ‘Anticipation,’ that awoke some heavy truths in me. Last year, early on in my Race they released ‘Praise Before My Breakthrough,’ which became an anthem for me through heavy seasons of brokenness. These songs came from deep places of pain, confusion, and doubt; real, raw, honest, worship of the Father even in the midst of brokenness. ‘Anticipation’ feels like the hopeful response, and I can’t help but see the parallels in the two very different seasons of my life that I’ve clung to this music.

I grew comfortable in the uncomfortable in the last year, and I’ve found myself back in a very, very comfortable life once again. God has felt different to me at home. I depended solely on Him to get through each day, because I literally couldn’t do it on my own. At home in America, I can do it on my own, just as I did for so much of life. It won’t be until much further down the line that I will see it wasn’t fruitful or lasting if the Lord wasn’t in it. Dependence on the Father goes against just about everything our American culture stands for. 

BUT, I’ve been reminded lately that as much as I change, as much as my circumstances and surroundings change at an overwhelming rate, God doesn’t. He’s the same. He met me every night in the stairwell of a hostel in Vietnam when I couldn’t see how He could be good amidst so much darkness and suffering in the world, in Serbia when His word became truly alive to me for the first time and I couldn’t get enough, in Ethiopia when I didn’t want the Race to ever end, and He’s met me even here in Memphis in such a season as this.

The powerful reality is that He isn’t finished yet. The Race may be over, but it was only the beginning. It isn’t a seamless transition for me between the Race and what’s next, but that doesn’t change who God is and that doesn’t change who I am.  

I’m shedding fear, insecurity, anxiety, comparison, and doubt. I’m choosing anticipation. I’m choosing hope, to trust that there are many, many seasons of goodness, glory, and promises fulfilled ahead of me. 

as surely as the sun rises
as surely as it sets
we anticipate the goodness
we anticipate the rest