written in the middle of africa. what i deem as the hardest and sweetest three months of my life. decided it was time to share.
“i say this only because time kept traveling through me. when i was young i thought i had forever to figure things out.”
before coming on the race i thought time was going to be my enemy. i thought it was going to hold me hostage in a never ending nine months where my whole body would slam into the glass cage of time begging to be let out of what i assumed would feel like eternity away from home. i grew accustomed to being fearful of time. thinking that nine months was too long and i wouldn’t survive without the food and water and things i deemed as necessities which came with living in america. how could i survive in a box bolted and shut for so long?
and to get even more specific i thought the box would shrink when coming to ethiopia. smaller and smaller with less air to breathe and my hunger would grow stronger and stronger for humanly desires. for earthly desires. even just letting the thoughts of these things roam in my head would lead to feelings of being claustrophobic and the hyperventilating would come and fear would take over. doubt that i was actually supposed to step in. step out.
and yet here i am.
sitting in a wide open field. with a lightness and expansive and lavish life right in front of my eyes. a life of fresh air. of sweet air that smells like how i imagined the creator, the architect of the galaxy, to smell after he designed and planted and gardened and nurtured this whole earth and universe into creation. a life where i am able to breathe without being burdened by the pressures and expectations of the world weighing down on my chest as my body gasps for air as i once allowed my form to endure. i thought that if i was fighting for the very breath i so desperately needed i was living a life of hard work that led to perfection.
the very place i feared would lead me to suffocation is the place where i have found that a life worth living is the one the lord has invited me to partake in. one of wide open space. a glorious place where time is not a boundary. a place of rolling hills where he just asks me to run. to run and laugh and lay on the green pastures and stare at his creation. a life of adventure. never promised an easy road but trusting him to lead me through a portal where the other side opened up to seeing the purest forms of beauty and magic and wonder.
so going back to the quote of being young and thinking i had forever to figure things out. i truly thought this. i truly thought forever, well, felt like forever. i assumed nine months was the simplest definition of the term forever. but man.
time is not holding me hostage. time has set me into a frenzy of freedom. because i have now come to see that time passes so quickly. i am starting month six of the race today. and all we talk about now on the race is time. how did it go by so quickly? how do we only have so little left? how do i soak it all in? how do i embrace adventure and excitement every single second of every single day?
as a kid, i didn’t think about time so much. the most i understood about it was feeling like ten minutes was not enough time to play with my friends after hearing the yell from my mom that i only had that much time left before dinner. and its still what i feel now. four months is not enough time to be with these people in all these places when i know its that amount of time left before i go home. and when speaking about time i thought it was defined by the big moments in life. the huge life altering ones that make great stories.
life altering ones like first words and first steps and losing teeth and learning to ride a bike and starting high school and graduating and special birthdays.
but what is a great story without the smallest details?
small details like wildflowers and sunsets in africa that i never thought would rival the ones i saw in texas creation. the tiniest parts of it that god took so much time designing and now he sits up among the stars and waits for me to notice them and love them because he had me in mind while creating them. small details like the paintbrush i use to paint all my favorite things. small things like children coming to my window to have a conversation about school. tiny things like times in a bunk bed where i literally pee my pants and can’t breathe from laughing so hard. a selfie that holds so much meaning because it was taken with a friend who once was a stranger. like having my teammate scrub my head multiple times in one day trying to treat my hair for lice. small things like a single laugh. a single smile. a single hand hold or cheek kiss from kids i only get three months with.
and looking back, i suppose god sent sunsets and forests and flowers and all the tiny things i love now, but what are those things to a kid?
so to my friend time. you have been sweet to me. you are the space in which i have been allowed to experience the most influential moments. the most precious seconds. the most entertaining minutes. the most thought provoking hours. the sweetest days. the months of most growth and change. and years of such memories.
all i ask is that you don’t pass through me so quickly. heres to eternity being free without a boundary of time. watching my father, light of heaven, never being shackled and chained by time, always passing though it so easily the way it passes through me.
