Hello. It’s been awhile.
The halfway point of the Race, which was about a month and a half ago, marked the longest time I had ever been out of the country or away from home. I had previously spent five and a half months studying abroad in Europe, and had never once felt homesick or gotten tired of being away. Somehow, eleven months didn’t seem much longer than that, to me, and for several months I thought I was immune to these feelings. Even as I watched others on my squad deal with missing home or wanting to throw in the towel at various points along the way, I never did, and I felt like I couldn’t sympathize when they confided in me. I was living my best life, and it just kept getting better.
Then I crashed.
There wasn’t a specific moment I can point to where it happened, because as I’ve been processing and looking back over all that has happened since I left back in January, I’ve realized that it was an accumulation of a lot of moments. I can, however, point to where it all caught up to me, and you probably can too. It happened shortly after my last blog update and Instagram post back in June (yes, it’s been awhile. I apologize). I’ve been quiet since then because I didn’t really know what to say or how to say it. Even when I had ideas for blogs I didn’t write them, and I haven’t worked on any of my photos since then either. I have a lot of catching up to do, and now I’m committing to that publicly. I would hate to go the rest of the Race without letting you all know what’s been going on, because it’s been a lot.
I think a lot of what helped pull me out of whatever rut that I’ve been in is the amount of people that have reached out in the last month or so, asking me how I’ve been and what I’ve been up to, since they hadn’t heard from me in awhile. It’s a common occurrence for me, not just on the Race, but in the rest of my life as well, to get in my head and think that people don’t care what I’m doing. I’ve watched the number of people who read these updates steadily drop since the Race began, and it’s easy for me to get discouraged and believe the lies that everyone back home doesn’t want to hear from me anymore. That obviously isn’t the case, and I can see that clearly.
There are other, more personal struggles that I’ve been dealing with as well through this time that have contributed to getting burnt out on all of this as well, but this is hardly the platform for all of that. Just know that, behind the facade of colorful Instagram photos and happy blog updates, this has not all been easy, and six months in, all of that really started to catch up to me. The ministry work became routine, and I stopped pressing in. I stopped being honest with my team about where I was at emotionally and spiritually. The constant moving and lack of stability started to get overwhelming. Last month we didn’t even have a host because of an Ebola outbreak near where we were supposed to be in Uganda, and that made it all even worse.
Now in Kenya with more consultancy, it’s still a struggle, but less so. I’ve started letting my team in to where I am and what I’m dealing with, and I’ve gotten nothing but support and encouragement in return (go figure). I’m learning to press in again, because I would hate to just skate through the last three months of this and not grow or get anything out of that. That’s not fair to my team that’s doing life alongside me. It’s not fair to my family and supporters that helped get me here. And it’s not fair to myself. I can’t give up, because God called me here for a reason. I can’t give up, because there’s work left to do. And I can’t give up, because I would look back with so much regret if I did.
When I was in Nepal, before all of this really started to hit me, I got a tattoo on my forearm to serve as a reminder when life got hard, and when I felt like quitting. The placement was intentional – I look at it every day. It says ‘we are once in a lifetime’ and it’s from a song by Switchfoot – the band that has been my favorite since I was a kid. The song, and those lyrics specifically, speak to the idea that God gives us each new day – each moment, even – as a new opportunity. We often only have one chance to take advantage of those opportunities before they are gone, and we are living out full lifetimes of those opportunities. I need to stop letting those slip through my fingers. Again, it’s not fair to anyone, and it’s certainly not what God intended when He called me to spend this month wandering all over the world. He wants more from me than that – more from all of us.
All of this to say, please keep praying for me. This isn’t over yet, and I’ve got just over three months left before it is. I want to finish strong, not burnt out. I want to take hold of and run with every opportunity God places in front of me for the rest of the year. I don’t want to get bogged down in what’s going wrong and who’s frustrating me at any given moment. I want to focus on why I’m here – why God wanted me to be where I am right now. Pray that I don’t lose sight of that.
And I promise. More updates are coming. The last two months have been full of stories that I still want to share, and ways that God has been moving in my life and in my team. I’m not gonna skip over that, so now I’m playing catch up.
As always, thank you for your prayers and support. I wouldn’t be here without it.
