I’ve reached that point. The point where I want to quit. I’m so overwhelmed. I can’t handle it anymore. I feel like I’m drowning. I’m tired. I have f.o.m.o. of everything that my friends and family are doing at home. And the race has made me realize how much I suck. Or for the sake of my mom who is going to read this (hi mom!) : The race has made me realize just how much I need to work on myself. I’m sad, I miss home, I feel alone, I’m stretched farther than I feel like I can handle. I want to quit.
Quitting would solve my problems. Quitting would be easier. Quitting would be more comfortable.
The lies of the enemy are swarming my head this week telling my I don’t belong here, telling me this is too much for me to bear, telling me that the grass is greener on the other side.
I want to quit!
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Before leaving for the race, about 5 months ago, I hit a peak. I remember sitting down and actually being so proud of myself. I was talking to God, and thought to myself, “This is it, I’ve made it!”
LOL NOPE; come to find out I was so far off.
I received a key necklace before the race, and it’s a prophetic key. The company works with World Race and makes a key necklace and prays over what word to put on it for each specific person. They ask God what word we each need for our journey; the word on my key is “whole”.
I’m not going to lie, I laughed when I got the key. I was at a place where I felt completely whole. For the first time in my life, I had 3 months of complete confidence, secure in my identity, certain I was in God’s will, no insecurities, I was finally fully myself. Additionally, God gave me the same word in 2017 and brought it to pass by making my family whole. Needless to say, I was quite confused why I had this key, and also prideful enough to think it was incorrect (this is turning out to be a common theme in my life… yikes! But fun fact, before the race I also had spent 6 months praying for humility… Be careful what you pray for because you just might get it! Come to find out, I have a lot more pride to work through than I ever dared to imagine). I thought, “Maybe the key is for me to give someone else because I already walked through this, so I guess I can share my testimony and give the key to someone who needs it.” Although this may still be true, I recently came to find out this key is for me. Right now.
Like I said, the last few months before the race, I felt like I was on top of the world; following God with my whole heart and felt as if I was in exactly the right place, and for that time I was. I had no more insecurities because I had dealt with them. I was healed of all my holes so I felt completely whole. Then came the race. Where everything was stripped away all at once, and then even more things one by one.
My family, my church, my ministry, my Bible study, my job, my school, my routine, my friends, my gym, everything that was my life and that made up Ashley was stripped away.
Over the last 4 weeks this has hit me HARD. Feeling insecure, empty, unsure of who I am. And I’ve been so confused. I was finally proud of this person who I became. I had grown into the person he had created me to be. How did I lose all of this?
All these new found, yet awful feelings I’ve been dealing with have caused me to act out in ways I never would have in the past. I’m not sure if you’ve ever met someone who acts out of emotion and insecurity, but they are very hard to deal with and not very nice either. Hurting people hurt people. Yeah, that’s me. I’m definitely not proud of this, and I’m very sorry to everyone who’s been in my path while walking through this (aka my team).
All these feelings are what made me want to quit.
Last weekend I was on the roof talking to God about this confusion. I asked him why all these insecurities that I had dealt with before have all of a sudden resurfaced. I asked why I didn’t know who I was. I asked why I’m always in pain.
You see, what the pictures I post don’t show is the internal struggle that I still deal with as a human being. Lost, alone, afraid, confused, hurt.. Only God and I really know how I’ve been feeling. Which is weird in itself, because I went 4 years without shedding a tear until one of my best friends died and after that, I decided to turn off my feelings again because the pain was too much to bear. Over the last year I’ve been asking God to bring my feelings back, because when I turned them off, I lost my empathy and compassion as well. I wanted to feel again, and since going on the race, God was oh-so-generous to drop all my emotions on my lap all at once. For the sake of understanding, the way I could explain this mass explosion of emotions was like being stuck on the bottom floor of a skyscraper when an earthquake hit and knocked the skyscraper over, and now I’m buried in the bottom of the rubble.
The rubble I’m drowning in consists of three things: 1) all the areas of my life which I’m insecure, 2) attacks on my identity, 3) areas I actually need to grow in.
The feeling of drowning is the worst feeling in the world. It’s hard to breathe, and it’s the most helpless feeling in the world.
This is why I want to quit. I know my life at home is a life-preserving tube that will save me, but I also know that if I hold on to that tube forever, I will never learn how to swim. I will never get stronger.
So here I am sitting with all these unknowns about myself. (Which also before the race was not ever a thing because I was the most self-aware observant person and knew the why behind everything I felt and everything I did.)
To sum it all up; I have no idea who this person is that I’m living inside of. Idk where I lost Ashley, but this sure isn’t the Ashley I’ve known, and this definitely isn’t the Ashley I’m proud of, or want others to see.
Back to my conversation with God. He then spoke to me and gave me an illustration, like a parable, to explain where I was at in life and why I felt the way I did. He showed me a little sapling of a plant growing inside of a pot. This pot had holes in the bottom where the roots of the plant spread through and attached onto other things. It wrapped its roots around poles, other plants, weaving in and out of everything it could. This little plant was a cute, tiny, blossomed flower with roots far greater than the plant itself.
The plant was then pulled out of the pot. In the process, the roots were torn off. The soil that the plant was growing in now had many holes where the roots used to be. Then this little flower was planted in the ground.
Now it all make sense. God explained that I had grown into a beautiful little flower in my season of 20 years (wow, embarrassing it took me that long! Thank the Lord for his patience). This flower had its roots spreading out and attaching itself to other things. In my circumstance these were still good things, so I thought they were from God. Things like: family, church, friends, school, work, etc. All these things were used to fill my holes and make up my identity.
So when God pulled me out of my little pot and literally placed me in the earth, I felt like I was drowning in rubble. My holes hurt because I found out that the holes weren’t actually filled with Him. God ripped out the things that made up my identity that weren’t him. It’s no wonder I have no idea who I am anymore. Who is Ashley without her entire culture and community to create her? Who is Ashley on her own? Who is Ashley without anything else except God?
I asked why I couldn’t stay where I was. Since I had grown so “big” into a good thing. It was easier there, I was comfortable, and I felt like I was flourishing. He told me I wouldn’t have been able to grow anymore, and I asked what was so bad about that? He said that he wouldn’t be able to do all he wanted to do through me if I stayed in that place and didn’t grow anymore. And since this life isn’t about me, he needed me to grow to fulfill all he wants to do through me.
So now, I get to deal with all my holes. Holes I had patched up, but never actually healed. It’s no wonder I feel like I’m drowning in rubble, I’m literally engulfed in dirt all around me. But where I’m drowning isn’t actually a bad thing. God just had to change my perspective of where I was. From my point of view, I’m drowning in rubble which looks like a bad thing that I can’t get out of, but from His point of view, I’m finally planted in a place where I can flourish. I am drowning in dirt, and now I have to place my roots around the Father and not grow up in things of this world. God has now put me in a place to really grow me and help me flourish.
It’s amazing how we can so easily be deceived by “good” things, that aren’t actually God things. It’s also amazing that what we can view as bad, God has intended for our good.
Now it’s time to grow. Growing hurts. It’s not fun. It’s not easy. It would be so much more comfortable to go back to my pot, and not grow any more. Being stretched out and pulled isn’t a nice feeling, but God knows just how much to stretch you to where you won’t break.
Looks like I’m not going to quit because I need the rest of the race in order to grow, so stay tuned through the next 8 months while I learn who I actually am and who God created me to be. It’s so ironic to me that I didn’t go on this race to find out who I am, yet God still wants to teach me that.
