Alumni racers talk about “that blog.” The one that you swear you’d never write but kind of eats at you until you do. That shares some of the deepest parts of yourself and your journey. Well here is mine. Surprisingly I am not afraid to write it because I am learning that circumstances and worldly descriptions do not define me. I am not writing my own story, the Lord is and this is just a piece of it. Although I do not believe that the Lord intentionally gives us things to constantly make us struggle, He has His reasons for everything, I do know that it is all for His glory. It is our job to share the testimony of His glory no matter how messy and uncomfortable the story is because at the end of the day, at the end of this life, it’s not about me.
I wish that I could say in leaving Chile, even with how much I loved the people, enjoyed our work and saw the Lord move, that it was a great month. But honestly, for me it was one of the hardest emotionally. Almost as soon as I stepped foot in the parking lot of Antofogasta, it was as if someone readministered the cape of anxiety. Ya’ll it was heavy. For those of you who do not struggle with anxiety, let me paint you a bit of a picture. The feelings I experienced getting off the bus this month were not unfamiliar. So clearly I can picture where I was standing when I had my first anxiety attack either my junior or senior year of high school. What brought it on? Not meeting an expectation. Into college, this caused a plummet into full blown depression. One of the many things the race has done is helped me realize that alot of this stems from wanting to love people the way they need to be loved and when I feel like I can’t, it literally gives me anxiety. Now don’t get me wrong, I hear how irrational it sounds. How can love cause anxiety? Sometimes when anxiety strikes, it can feel like you are hovering on the outskirts of your own rationality and even though you know truth, one of the most frustrating things is that in that moment, month, season, you can’t seem to believe any of it. That happened this month, luckily for the most part, the first two weeks. Chilean people are very expressive and candid. Language barriers are especially difficult in such a feeling culture because everything shows on their faces and in their body language. I can relate to that alot. Confusion, disappointment, approval, love. All of us had to walk through this communication style this month and it was hard. Everyday I felt like I ended the day thinking, “if you just tell me what to do then I will do it. I want to make things better. I want to live you the best that I can.” This spilled over into my team as I tried to wade through what this version of anxiety looked like. There were several moments where I felt like I wasn’t loving them well because I was trying to figure out what I needed and that only allowed more water into the well I had found myself in.
It’s not like anxiety hadn’t followed me onto the race, but in month one, that was just a part of my identity. I wish that I could tell you when the Lord shed the onsie sized suit I used to wear versus the cape of this month, but pin pointing that is hard to tell. It is probably laying in Africa somewhere. Even though it was messy and extremely hard, my first team on the race will be one of the things I am most thankful for this year. They loved me so hard. I can look back now and realize that I was really good at pushing people away from me when I didn’t know how to or didn’t feel like I was loving them well. When questions such as “how do you best feel loved?” or “what do you need?” came up and I realized I legitimatly didn’t have an answer to either one of those. I tried so hard to pull away because, I felt like I was not equally contributing the the relationships they were pursuing. But the harder I pushed the more they pulled back. The more they pursued. The Lord has blessed me with several people over the last six years or so that have shown me glimpses of the relentless pursual of Christ. Dealing with anxeity after depression looked like holding people as far out as I could because I knew that there would be attainable perfection in that type of relationship. Silly, yes. That’s not the way relationships work, or healthy ones anyway. But the Lord has been so gracious since that season in giving me people that the harder I try to push, the more they fought for me. They never shamed me for my inability to express what I was feeling, for my often complicated way of processing and the very learned art of perfection. I walked into this year clinging to my anxiety because if nothing else, it was known, able to be navigated and had grown comfortable. Training camp for this trip was the first time I told my whole story, my whole testimony to anyone. Appearing perfect was always part of my defense, although I’m not entirely sure anymore what I was defending against. Maybe that all of my worst fears were true; about myself, people and what they thought of me. At the end of month one at our first full squad debrief with our leadership, my squad mentor, Megan, who barely knew me at that point, gave me one of the most genuine and freeing hugs I’ve ever gotten. She said, “Jessie, you don’t have to be perfect all the time. You don’t have to wear the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
It seems like every time I tell my testimony now, it changes. Probably because I have learned just a little bit more and have new realizations every month. But one thing I always try to include is the moment grace became real to me. When I was a senior in college I went on a mission trip to Haiti. During one of our dental clinics, the leader of our trip was talking about the grace that Jesus offers to a man who practiced voodoo. He said he understood about the sacrifice of Jesus and how it had to be Him, but wanted to know what he had to do to receive that grace? She explained that the definition of grace means that there was nothing we could do to earn it. If there was, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus and His perfection wouldn’t have mattered. This blew me away and was as if I was hearing it for the first time. But then it doesn’t stop there. The Lord has continued to teach me about His grace since then. Through the relationships I have now, in my students, how I read the Bible, and on the race. This month, I really reflected on Megan’s words from the first debrief and stood on the truth of the grace of Christ as I walk through what dealing with anxiety looks like in this season. Did it feel the same as it always did? Yes. Was it just as heavy and potentially debilitating? Yes. But was the Lord glorfied and created a testimony that speaks to His grace and love? Absolutely! He showed me things we still need to work through as He prepares my heart to go home. There are so many more positive coping strategies when dealing with anxiety that make managing it functional. He also continues to show me how tangible and active He is in even the seemingly insignificant parts of our lives. The Lord showed me ways to love our hosts well in a way that only I could as I navigated through cultural barriers. He also gave me a friend. This was huge for me! Relationship with people and making them feel seen and loved gives me life, but even if I was able to do that for my new friends, they did that for me so much more. It filled pieces of my heart that were aching this month.
The Lord has been teaching me about perfectionism induced anxiety and how we follow and emulate a perfect Savior. Sanctification is a process, but we are given so much grace by a Father who only asks that we strive to look more like Him everyday. We see perfection as maintaining control and having our lives together. God, just sees Jesus. In us, through us and inspite of us. I had a rude awakening that the same things that I struggled with a year ago are still going to exist as I acclimate to being home. But I have so many good things and people to take with me into battle against them as well as having such a sweet understanding of who the Lord is and who He says I am. I can be a person that is characterized and ruled by anxiety, or I can be a person who lives under grace that occasionally struggles with anxiety. It’s a choice, and one I am learning to commit to the Lord every day.
