Y’all I cannot say it enough that God is SO good, even down to the little details!
Before coming on the Race when I was choosing my route, I knew I wanted to follow a route close to my sister’s route (which I’ve already talked about before), but I also knew I did not want to have to cross the Thailand-Cambodia border.
If you don’t know what that is, the Thailand-Cambodia border is an approximately two-mile stretch of no-man’s-land that you must cross on foot. So that means if you’re on the race you need to carry your “small child and toddler” with you—aka, your pack (small child) and day pack (toddler)—while walking that two-mile stretch. With that being said, I then chose a route that didn’t have Cambodia.
So fast forward to month 4, during the first half of our month in Malaysia, we had the wonderful opportunity to meet up with Q-Squad, who was in month 11 of their race. Throughout conversation we found out that they not only had to cross the Thailand-Cambodia border, but they also crossed the Thailand-Malaysia border—and they said that the border to Malaysia was a worse experience than the one to Cambodia.
*Insert fear in Bethany’s life right here.*
The thoughts running through my head were instantly ones of panic, fear and being ready to give up. I had thought:
“Nope.
I’m done.
I can’t do this.
I did my best to not sign up for this ‘hike.’
Why God? You know travel days are the hardest for me physically.
How am I going to get through this?”
I’d love to say that instantly God told me that He would take care of it, and that everything would be alright, and from that moment on everything was honky-dory within my mind and I was completely at peace.
But… that was not the case. Instead, I then thought of the verse in Luke 9 where Jesus sends out the twelve disciples and tells them “take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic” and was like “fine, I’m ready to just get rid of EVERYTHING that I brought with me and then I can just walk the border without having to carry anything. Problem solved.”
Needless to say I was being a little more than a little feisty with myself that day.
Thankfully, I didn’t do that. I knew fairly quickly that I was not supposed to get rid of everything that I brought with me.
You see, although God talks to us with scripture, so can Satan. And in that certain situation it was not God reminding me of the verses, but rather Satan. I know this because right after I looked up Luke 9 I felt I should also read Luke 4, which is over the temptation of Jesus—it was verses 9-12 that stood out to me, reminding me that the devil knows scripture too.
Luke 4:9-12
9The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11they will left you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 12Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
I also had to remind myself that God had promised to take care of me while at training camp, prior to the race, and that He told me He would bless me throughout the race if I let Him lead me to a point where I could only rely upon trusting in Him. I thus held tightly to Romans 4:20-21 for the remainder of the month whenever travel day arrangements were brought up in conversation.
Romans 4:20-21
20Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.
So….
Let’s fast forward again to travel day.
The night before, the rest of the squad came to Penang to spend the night with our three teams that have already been there in order to have an early start to traveling. At 5:20am we started our hike from the housing location to the ferry—about a 15-minute hike. Overall not a bad hike, but to be honest, I was huffin’ and puffin’ a little bit. And David noticed. So, from that moment on, he felt semi like a dad for the day—making sure that I was alright and didn’t need him to carry anything for me (what an angel); I kept telling him, “no, I’m good for now, but ask me again at the border.”
Once we got across the ferry, and made it through the first train; we were finally at the border—which we all were expecting to have to walk. During our first waiting point off of the train, while our logistics people did their thing, I slowly walked over to where Melissa and David were standing to chat and say hi and to overall just rest for a minute. I thought I was doing pretty decent.
However apparently, I didn’t look as good as I thought I was doing, because very quickly both David and Melissa asked if I was okay and initially I tried saying “yes,” but while in the process of saying that one syllable word, I broke down into tears—although I was in some physical pain, the tears were more from mental and emotional stress thinking about having to walk the border with my gear. Which I expressed to them.
It was this point where David went into “dad-mode” and told me, “take off your pack. When we move again I’ll take your pack and you can take my day pack.”
I gave up trying to fight the help being offered. You see, I am 100% the person who does not want to be a burden to others, especially on something like the race where I know it will be tougher for me physically—but hey, I signed up for it, so I should be able to pull my own weight, right?
However, all within that same moment I thought back to training camp, after I expressed my fears about not being able to physically handle the race one of the guys on my squad (I believe it was Isaiah) came up to me during worship and told me that if I decide to come on the race, the guys will do their absolute best to help me with carrying whatever I couldn’t handle; and to be honest, that settled a lot of my fears at training camp and was a very large portion of why I decided to come.
So, David became a huge blessing to me, but the blessings and God’s faithfulness and favor didn’t stop there!!
Once our logistics leaders came back to our group (around 9:55a) we were told we needed to hurry because the train leaving for Hat Yai (where we were going) was supposed to leave at 9:50a, but the station was going to hold the train for us to get through customs and take the train—a feat that took our group a little less than two hours to complete.
So, not only did God prove Himself faithful to me through David carrying my pack, but He showed His faithfulness and favor to our entire squad by allowing us to take a train across the border rather than having to walk!!
Needless to say, I began crying again when I heard the news about the train and then was rejoicing so hard when we finally made it on the train.
God’s faithfulness stands like the mountains.
Thanks to Melissa for taking this wonderful photo of me hanging out of the side of the train that we weren’t supposed to make, but God showed His favor and faithfulness, and for that I had every reason to have my hands up and a smile on my face the entire ride.
