I was sitting in a juvenile detention center in San Andrés, Colombia leading worship for a group of Colombian teenagers when I heard the words in my heart, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”. I recognized the passage in Scriptures but immediately attributed the words to a passing thought and let them glide by like smoke, brushing past my heart without making an impact. Over the next couple days, God would not let me ignore them any longer so I begrudgingly opened my Bible to find the story. It read:
“35While He was still speaking, messengers from the house of Jairus arrived and said, “Your daughter is dead; why bother the Teacher anymore?”36But Jesus overheard their conversation and said to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just believe.” 37And He did not allow anyone to accompany Him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James.38When they arrived at the house of Jairus, Jesus saw the commotion and the people weeping and wailing loudly. 39He went inside and asked, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.” 40And they laughed at Him.After He had sent them all out, He took the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and went in to see the child. 41Taking her by the hand, Jesus said, “Talitha koum!” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” 42Immediately the girl got up and began to walk around. She was twelve years old, and at once they were overcome with astonishment.” – Luke 8:40-56
I, too, had been “asleep” for a very long time not so very long ago. Through the grace of God, about a year before applying for the Race, so many things in my life became alive after a long hibernation. Hope blossomed alongside a beautiful array of other spiritual gifts and graces. I was experiencing soul-enriching joy. I watched in growing belief as trust grew roots that ran deep in the Heart of God. But in other ways, even with all of the healing and grace I had received, I was still lying on my mat like the little girl in Scriptures, waiting for something else to happen to give me a reason to leave the floor and move. I was attached to the comfort of my wounds and excuses. I loved and hated my mat and felt bound to it, waiting for just one more miracle to happen to convince me to rise up. That’s when I found the World Race.
Fast forward to my first month in Colombia, I had moved thousands of miles from home and still hadn’t moved an inch. I thought the race was supposed to change me overnight, like I would walk through a portal between the person I was and the person I wanted to be. Missionaries are selfless. Missionaries are close to God. ‘I’m a missionary, aren’t I?’, I reasoned.
…Aren’t I?
These were the thoughts I had as a terrible truth dawned on me after month one of the Race. I was a missionary. I also wasn’t the person I wanted to be. Was the World Race a terrible mistake?
It took me a solid week for my expectations of living on mission to come crashing at my feet. It dawned on me slowly and all at once while in San Andrés that I had signed up largely because I wanted to be the KIND of person who did missions. I liked the idea of being a globe-trotting, selfless person and naively assumed that being transplanted in a foreign country would provoke the change I wanted to see. I imagined walking through the airport terminal and landing on South American soil feeling serene and confident, all the brokenness and chains in my life obliterated to dust in the light of my new, crazy life.
But that wasn’t the case. I quickly found that I didn’t want to pray, felt negative and drained regardless of our uncharacteristic copious amounts of free time, and struggled to be present to my teammates. My only moments of peace were when I could break away to go for a run or sneak in time to shut the world out completely. I was a missionary by title only, but my heart felt very far away from the people we served. This wasn’t what I had envisioned long-term mission would look like and I wasn’t what I thought I’d look like either. I wasn’t cheerful or brave- quite the opposite actually. My mind drifted back to a conversation I had with my teammates during “team time” at launch in Atlanta, huddled around two twin-sized beds in a hotel room discussing what we wanted most from the Race. After a long pause spent deliberating on whether or not I should speak aloud a difficult truth, I admitted one word- “Freedom”. The only thing I had left to do was to use the freedom I had already been given. But how?
I’ve been finding, the only thing my living in South America will change is my scenery unless I am willing to put the work in to change. I am not powerless to my selfishness and commitment to my own comforts. I am not powerless to the widening chasm I have felt between myself and God, growing deeper and more perilous by the day. I am also not bound to sit in the waiting room of my own life. In fact, I’ve never been truly powerless. None of us have.
Now I’m certainly not telling you how to walk in freedom, only that you should and that it’s offered to you. I’m still working out the kinks over here but I know I’m off the floor, using my shaky legs to start paving a trail. It’s a crazy, wild life and I intend to see it from a better vantage point than my mat. A good starting place has been to follow the story of the little girl in the Bible. After getting up, the first thing Jesus tells her to do is to eat and get strength for the journey- and I intend to do just that. I’ll take my blessings as food for the journey, arise and choose my own way.
In the end, everything lies in that.
