It’s month 7.
(By now I’m used to separating my life into months; it’s become a normal thing)
This is when you realize, there are more days behind you than there are ahead. We’ve been travelling for over a half year – our first month in China was 6 months ago. How crazy is that!?!
By this time, the adventure and excitement of world travelling is starting to wear off. It’s becoming normal life; settling down for a few weeks only to pack up again and move on to the next place, changing to a new currency every month and adding even more coins to our wallets, learning snippets of languages from each country and trying not to confuse them. Yeah, there are still exciting days, but the excitement we started with is slowly fading. We’re beginning to face the fact that the Race will be over in a few short months, and what will we do with our lives then?
Some days are hard, I’m not gonna lie….Travelling is physically exhausting. Constantly moving from country to country, making new friendships and then having to say goodbye at the end of the month is harder than I imagined when I signed up for the Race. There are days when I get tired of my team and just want to be back home with family and friends who understand and know me. Thoughts of home and comfort can easily steal us away from being present and staying focused on ministry and our team.
Some days are spiritually hard – spiritual warfare is a real thing, and that’s something we’re learning as we travel Asia. The spirit world is so much more real here; people believe in spirits and there is a lot more focus on the unseen realm. Here in Thailand they have ‘spirit houses’ on almost every street corner. We feel the effects of the enemy attacking us (things like disunity, exhaustion, nightmares, bad attitudes, etc.) and we are learning to fight back with prayer, scripture, and truth from God’s word. It’s not always fun or easy.
Another thing I’ve realized is that being on the Race, being a missionary, doesn’t automatically make you a ‘good Christian.’ The struggle is just as real as it is back home. We still have a daily choice to serve God and seek Him. It’s so easy to be distracted by things like wifi, constantly being on your phones/computers, watching movies or TV shows on Netflix, shopping (and spending too much money!), thinking about what will happen after the Race…. Not that these things are bad, it’s just easy to forget why we came on the Race in the first place.
I didn’t travel to the other side of the world just to maintain the same life I had back in America – I signed up and came on the Race to serve and to tell others the good news of Jesus. Sometimes I need to remind myself. Our main purpose for travelling is not for adventure – even though adventure days are awesome!! – but our purpose is to serve every ministry, every person we come in contact with, and to share the love and light of Jesus Christ.
It’s a choice we all have to make daily. We get out of bed in the morning and we have to choose to focus on Jesus, to serve in ministry even when we don’t feel like it or don’t enjoy what we’re doing, to invest in our teammates and love them, to stay present and focused where we are rather than thinking about home, the next country, or life after the Race.
All this being said, I’m not going to lose heart or give up. Yes, some days may be harder than others, but I know that God brought all of us here for a reason. He is taking us on a journey, and He is going to finish the work He started in us.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
-Hebrews 12:1-2
