I must say that my first job after college was quite a humbling experience. The job came through a family friend, and I did not even need to interview. She was excited about my trip and offered to help. The work was simple and repetitive, and there were days when I felt I wasn’t connecting with anyone. There were times I felt alone and encountered many moments of stress. But as I thought about working towards the World Race, I did my best to be grateful and stay positive. What struck me the most during this job was the diversity in the work environment. After deciding to go on this mission trip, I was surrounded by people from all over the world—Mongolia, China, Malaysia, Mexico, Columbia, Yugoslavia, Pakistan and more. Although that first temp job did not last long, it solidified the desire for me to go on this trip and walk through every step to get there.
After that job, I quickly found more work, and also an amazing internship! It has been incredible to see God provide every step of the way. There have been times of struggle in trusting Him, but He meets me every time. Even when it feels like I am “doing a bad job” at fundraising or not being enough, doing enough, producing enough, He walks me through places of inward healing. During this process, it is easy to get caught up in the outward results. But as I approach Him in feelings of brokenness, He reaches down with words of love, specifically from passages in the Bible and encouragement from good friends. This process is so much more of an inward change than I expected, but this draws me to needing Him to needing Him that much more. And then afterwards, the results I was hoping for somehow suddenly came on their own. But of course by the time that happens, I am so busy seeking Him, those results are not even what I am seeking anymore.
It’s a daily process. Often God works little by little over time, perhaps by the measure of trust I am willing to give day by day. In my efforts to keep going and press on in fundraising and also requesting loved ones to be praying for me on this trip, God has been steadily moving much more on the inside than on the outside, gently warming places of my heart frozen in time. Let me explain:
Junior high girl gets hurt—not in a blow to the head kind of way but small and slow, stinging drops of poisonous rejection and misplaced expectations in semi-friends. Then eventually that season of her life gets blurred as she protects herself from further pain by choosing to forget, unknowingly building up walls and a performance mentality which leads her to believe that her value is what she can produce and how much she can accomplish. Mix that in with a religious “I have to be good enough” kind of attitude and you get a little girl trapped inside suffocating in her desire to finally be loved in not what she can do but who she is. Fast forward to the college grad preparing for a year long mission trip and still fighting to understand that her beauty is not in the things she can offer or the goals she can accomplish but in the finished work of Christ. There have definitely been moments of healing since then, but it feels like God wants me to go deeper. It’s amazing when you pray for God to allow you to see yourself through His eyes, He allows you to understand your pain and takes you back to that place of feeling vulnerable all over again. He tenderly peels back layers of choosing to forget and finally answers the questions in your heart that you so desperately wanted to someone else to answer: “Am I lovely? Am I worth fighting for? Do you see me? Am I valuable? Is my heart precious to you?”
Now at 24, I am past those growing up years. But as I take this leap of faith to go on this trip around the world, God is moving in long-deserted places on my heart and bringing new life on the inside. He sees that worried little girl on the inside and wiping every tear, holding my hand and walking by my side. He is picking flowers for me and telling me how much He loves me. I am learning a new side of who Jesus is, not a standard to be met but a person to embrace. Even as a believer in Jesus for a long time now, my relationship is growing in a new way, and I honestly just want to know Him more and more personally. As I go on this trip, I hope to not only talk about this Person with people around the world, but also deeply know Him for myself.
