The last week has been a year in seven days. If you don’t know by now, the organization I’ve been serving with decided it was best to bring all on-field missionaries home due to the world response to COVID-19. I’ve now been in the States for about a week and this is nothing like what I expected I’d be coming home to. Before the race you constantly hear to drop all expectations about what your eleven months will look like. However, I’m learning that this is a lesson I need to carry into post-race life as well.
This isn’t some new revelation. I’m sure most of us have heard the phrase before, “expect the unexpected.” It’s definitely not the easiest thing to grasp. We want to make a plan, know our options, be in control..but for so many things in our lives we are not. I truly tried to go on the race with no expectations, but I for sure had at least one. The expectation that my race would be #11n11, and that I would see South America with my squad. It’s now obvious that God did not intend for that, and to be transparent with you I am heartbroken about it. I wanted so bad to see how my squad would grow in South America, and the connections that would be made. Personally, the last three months were shaping up to be something marvelous for myself. My four months in Africa had brought about many questions and trials, but I saw God in so many new ways. Asia was more difficult with its more modernized societies, but where I had kinda hit a low, I could feel God pulling not just me but my whole team out of the valley as we finished out our months halfway around the world. Oddly enough in what we didn’t know at the time would be our last team time, it was revealed that nearly everyone on my team had prayed a similar prayer for the upcoming three months: “break me Lord, give me Your heart, move undeniably in my life.” My personal journal entry reads, “break me for what breaks YOU, I want BOLD prayers, I want BOLD answers, I just want to live like YOU…whatever the cost.” I thought I knew the gravity when I prayed and wrote those words, but I don’t think I knew what “whatever the cost” could actually look like. I had this expectation in my head of this kindling fire becoming something like a bonfire in these last months. Now, I don’t mean this to sound full of gloom. I believe the mission and the promises are still the same, just on a different continent than expected. America needs the Father in so many ways. Being home has not been easy. With the self-quarantine recommendation I can’t see my friends, most places are closed, and generally nothing has been like I expected. This expectation of a grand welcome home and joyful reunions has instead been replaced by the reality of isolation and singular text messages if any communication at all. I don’t see the plan. I can’t even see two steps in front of me at the moment, and while I’m filled with compounded heartbreak at how this has all transpired, I’m trusting His promises and His goodness. There’s a reason He called home nearly 500 missionaries in the midst of their journeys, and I find so much HOPE in the idea that He has something planned for this. At this point, I’m expecting the unexpected!
Thank you all so much for following along my journey with me. Your support financially, through prayer, and through the outpouring of love has meant more than you could ever know. I know I could not have done this alone.
Bowen
