Okay I’m going to be honest. I have put off this first blog for a long time, and I’ve actually written several first posts but didn’t like any of them. So I decided to just be honest.
I’ve never been a great writer and one of the most scary things about the race for me has been writing these (yeah I know it’s kind of a lame fear). But as I’ve been struggling trying to figure out what to write and looking at countless other first blogs making sure I did it the “right” way, the Lord has been teaching me. He’s reminded me that this is my journey. It doesn’t matter how anyone in the past has written their blogs. He’s showed me that He has a plan for every single person and your purpose is too valuable to be the mistaken as the same as someone else’s. You can’t follow a car that’s going to a different place and then expect to get where you need to be.
I’ve also been scared people are going to think I’m crazy for doing a gap year and the Lord has been showing me it’s absolutely okay for people not to agree with me. It’s actually expected.
Galatians 1:10 puts it pretty straight forward
“For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
I don’t need 10 people to proof read before I post a blog because I’m worried that it’s not good enough. God doesn’t ask us to be good enough, he asks us to be real. So I’m going to forget commas, misspell words and probably not make sense sometime lolz. But this is my crazy, beautiful, exciting, scary, unbelievable journey. Who knew following Jesus would be the greatest adventure of all???
So here is my why for going on the race:
So way back to the summer before sophomore year I went to Israel with my parents and one night we were eating dinner with some friends who live there and they were explaining how growing up in Israel, everyone is required to join the military for a certain amount of time. After their time in the military everyone goes on a gap year before college to see the world. This idea was so cool and definitely planted a seed in me.
Around junior year in high school you’re encouraged to kind of figure out what you want to do and where you want to go to college. When that time came for me, I got this super weird feeling that college just wasn’t it yet. I ignored it for a while but every time I found somewhere I liked I just deep down knew there was something more. One night I was sitting in bed procrastinating homework like usual and I literally just googled gap years as I was struggling with what this “something more” for me was. The world race came up and as I read, I was thinking wow that is really awesome. I told my parents about it and they were completely up for it, which was definitely not what I was expecting. About a month after bringing it up to the parents, a new girl came on staff at my church who just happened to the new junior girl’s leader and who just happened to have gotten back from the race about a month earlier. We went to coffee and she told me all about the race. I started seriously thinking, praying and talking to lots of people about it. I’m not even joking when I say every friend or teacher I talked to the race about knew someone who had done it and I was like woww alright God, this is what you’ve been showing me and tugging my heart at. Now here we are.
The Lord has already taught me so many things in the past month, I can’t even imagine what’s to come!! Make sure to subscribe so you can follow the rest of my journey!!!!
