There is a moment that World Racers are warned about.
We know that at some point this moment will happen.
There is no way to know when it will happen.
No way to know where it will happen.
This moment is the moment that you have a breakdown and you feel the weight of your experience.
For some it happens at the grocery store.
For some it happens at the mall.
For some at a restaurant.
It is the moment at some point in your reentry process when you realize the significance of the poverty and despair you have seen while traveling the world.
It is the moment when it hits you like a ton of bricks that you got to be with people in some of their darkest moments.
It is the moment that you realize your life was truly changed and your eyes can’t un-see what they have seen.
It hurts.
It sucks.
It makes you uncomfortable all over again.
In an instant you are taken back to a place; a moment; a journey; your race.
Since coming home I have had several moments that I expected to be like this.
False alarms I suppose.
I still get a little anxious in the cereal aisle.
I have no idea why there needs to be 1500 different brands of tuna or canned beans.
The variety of cookies and crackers is truly astonishing.
I expected to have this moment when I had to pay a ton of money for clothes or food.
There were so many times when I thought “this is it… this is my moment they warned me about.”
But those moments were never it.
Today I had my moment.
It came in a way I would have never expected.
My parents and I were driving down a two lane highway on our way to my brothers baseball game. The sun was shining, the windows were down, I had some sweet music playing on my iPod. Seemingly not a care in the world. We turned down this one road to head north and suddenly I saw it. The THING that made me have my moment. The county dump. Obviously first I saw the hill of it, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if I lived in a state that had hills and mountains. Then I saw the birds, the turkey vultures circling overhead. In an instant I was transported to Honduras when I went to the city dump with some of my squadmates. The smell. The trash. The way the people ran to the trucks to dig through the new garbage. The way the broken umbrellas and plastic became their newest earthly treasures. The people I met who were born there. The dump we drove past was no where near the size of the one just outside Tegucigalpa. There were no people living there. There were not children who would be born into that life and probably die living that life.
In that instant it was like my heart was being yanked from my chest and it took everything within me to keep my composure. All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry out to Jesus, cry tears for the lifestyle, cry tears that I have so many things, cry out in heartbreak and anguish and sadness and thankfulness and joy and pain and for every emotion I don’t know how to express. It is hard to go to sleep tonight knowing that this night there are children going to sleep in that dump praying that something will come in tomorrow’s trash to either feed them or help them buy food.
My moment came. Definitely not in the way I expected. You would think by now I would know not to have expectations for the way things will go because they rarely go that way anyways. I don’t have some crazy revelation. I don’t have some powerful closing point to this blog. I just wanted to be real and share my heart. Below are some pictures from our time at the dump. Photo Credit: Missy Hollinger Whether you have gone on the race or you have been following me along, I pray that God would bring you to these moments of revelation and that those moments would remind you to pray for our brothers and sisters in the world and remind you of God’s sovereignty. May the Lord bless you today and call you into action, whether that mean going on a mission trip, on the race, or being the person that sends out others. Amen.
Much Love,
-A
