Month’s before leaving on the World Race I remember scrolling through endless Instagram post of the infamous hashtag “#11n11″. I looked at the beautiful photos from racers on the field and thought to myself “this will be me in a few shorts months, the World Race will be reposting my photos.”
This didn’t happen though and my mind instantly went to comparison to the thought of “maybe my photos aren’t good enough or maybe my blog post are not creative enough to be recognized.” This mind trap takes over and makes you believe you have to be a certain way to be seen as a World Racer. I knew this was a problem and I knew I should not have went into this with that mindset, but it was there and consumed my mind for the first few months of my race.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”
-Colossians 3:23
I let myself believe I didn’t set expectations up for this trip and that I was doing this merely to work for the Lord. The problem with this was I was getting very frustrated when I would post things only to have them hardly recognized. This is the poison of social media. Your mind hardy recognizes the foolishness of what it is getting caught up in. I almost laugh now at the pettiness of what I was concerned with. How dare I get frustrated with not publicly being recognized for what I am doing.
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”
-Matthew 6:1
Months later I am in full recognition that what I am doing is not to be publicized to the world, because then in reality who am I doing the World Race for? I chose this trip for a reason and it wasn’t to let the world hear my name, but for the world to hear Jesus’ name be proclaimed. Now in month 7 I am standing firm in the fact that I am not here to be defined as a World Racer, but that I am here just as I am doing what I am called to do. I have let go of the pettiness of social media and I post what I enjoy posting without the worry of what the world thinks.
