I totally should have seen this coming.
I have been praying since before the race that God will grow me in big ways on this journey.
That He would break me, push me, stretch me, mold me in any way He wanted to.
I REALLY should have seen it coming when in month one it started to occur to me how cool it would be to lead missions teams one day, especially on medical trips. So I started praying and wondering if that idea was from God or something I had come up with on my own.
But somehow, it totally blindsided me.
On Tuesday, my entire squad met up to find out who our current squad leaders had raised up to be the new squad leaders. Because the current leaders are World Race alumni who only accompany us through the first four months of our race, they spend the first three months getting to know us all and figuring out who to raise up into leadership.
So when Lindsay…the very person who knew I wanted to be broken and changed, and also had told me on multiple occasions that leadership on her race pushed her harder than anything else…pulled me aside and said that they wanted me to become a team leader, my mind went blank. A couple of team mates seemed to anticipate this and advised me to pray about it beforehand, but I still hadn’t thought it would happen. After praying about it afterwards, I knew God wanted me to accept the position. I had sort of asked for it without realizing it since month one with all that “grow me” prayin' anyway. It makes perfect sense to me now that God would use this season to answer my prayers for transformation through the challenge of leadership.
But to be quite honest, I am scared to death. There are so many reasons I worry I will be inadequate in this role. Facilitating physical, emotional, and spiritual health and growth for 5 other adults, 24/7, seems incredibly daunting. Just thinking about financial and logistics planning for 8 months in 8 foreign countries raises my blood pressure. I hate conflict and arguments; how in the world am I supposed to be the one responsible for helping people hash stuff out?
I debated even writing about this for fear of sounding prideful, but it only made sense to tell my supporters since it will certainly be coming up anyway, and I desperately need your prayer. In all honesty, the role of leadership through an experience like this has already begun to humble me to how worthless I am at anything without God’s divine intervention and plan.
Because quite frankly, without God, I’ve got nothin’ to offer at all anyway. Leadership is going to drive me to a level of reliance on God and constant prayer that I have never known.
So in the coming days, weeks, and months, I can’t wait to see what God does in my new team. I pray He will show me how to help them, love them, encourage them. I pray that we will grow close through the good and the bad, and develop lifelong friendships. I pray that He will drive us to our knees in an understanding of our need for Him every day. And I pray that He will show me how to be a leader that He can speak through in every circumstance.
Please pray for me to seek the Lord and know what to do in this role that I am still trying to adjust to, and that our team will grow exponentially in the months to come. Also, if anyone has any leadership advice, please email or comment below…any and all advice is welcome!
