This is part two of a series of journal entries that I’ve written throughout my Race and have decided to make public. My hope is that letting my friends and family in on some of the rawer things I’ve gone through this year will give them a bigger glimpse of what the last 11 months of my life have looked like–because truly, this is a difficult year to explain! I hope these will help.
October 31, 2014
Hey God,
I’m in a plane heading to Atlanta, but by tomorrow I’ll be in the Philippines on the continent of Asia. Thank you for the heart friends on this squad who I can go to and be me. Help me grow in these relationships this year because they’re precious and I don’t want to miss them.
Thank you that I got to the Managua airport yesterday. Thank you that even though security searched my bags and confiscated my DEET mosquito spray, my squad cheered for me when I finally got on the plane and took my seat.
Last night we slept on the floor of that Managua airport, but before I fell asleep I caught myself just sitting still against a wall, alone in the middle of a room filled with 50 people. I thought about the room and my role in the room. And I began asking questions.
They were weird thoughts to just suddenly occur, but I found myself thinking, “Who am I? am I “me” here? with these people? am I acting like myself right now?
But wait, who is ‘myself?’
Is ‘myself’ who I was back at home? when I was with my family? when I was away at school with my friends? Who is ‘myself’?
Wait, who am I?”
Suddenly, it hit me hard: I think I’m having an identity crisis.
I started to realize, the World Race forces you to lose yourself entirely—your identity—because everything I’ve ever identified with I can’t take with me in my pack for these 11 months. There’s literally not room.
I can’t take my family. I can’t take my best friends, or the girls I discipled who look up to me. I can’t take my college degree, or the cute dresses I like to wear. I can’t take the church I go to. And I can’t take the people I’ve grown up with.
Guess who I take with me?
Jesus.
This year I’m not known as a student. I’m not known as my parents’ daughter, Brandon’s sister, or someone’s best friend. When that hungry little boy Oscar ran up to me in that Nicaraguan village last week and wrapped his arms around my leg, he didn’t see a graduate of Centerville High School, an alumna of Elon University, an employee, an intern, or a scholarship winner.
Jesus prompted my heart: “Who are you Katy? Who are you when it’s just Me and you in the room?”
I know in my head certain fixed things about my identity. I am a follower of God. I am His Disciple. I am His Daughter. I am His Princess
Is that enough for me? Will I let it be?
If I have no other identity, but that I have in Christ, who am I in Christ, and what does that woman look like when all the other layers are stripped away?
This is all hitting me in the Managua airport last night, and it made me stop dead in my tracks.
The only thing that matters this year about who I am is who I am in Jesus.
Who is that woman, Lord?
I’ve got to surrender all of my former identities. It’s gotta be me, plus Jesus, plus nothing. That is the desire of my heart.
If I can learn this year what that all means, truly, for my identity, I feel like I will finish the Race more “me” than when I began it.
More of my truest self. My eternal self. My glory self.
Who God saw when He designed me. Who I will be one day in heaven when it’s just me and my Lord.
How sweet, and lovely, and beautiful—a woman alone next to Christ—You are making me.
Make away,
katy
