Solviture ambulando.
It is solved by walking.
I read those works, a quote from Augustine of Hippo, somewhere around 3 a.m. on an overnight bus from Zambia. When I read it then, I don’t think I fully understood it. I’d only been through five months of the Race, five months of life lived wildly different than anything I’d done before.
There are some things about faith you can only learn by walking through them. The soil under your feet teaches you more than than your mind can parse. Some things are only solved by walking.
This is my last day of the World Race. I’m writing this in the waiting area in the La Paz airport at 6:30 in the morning. The squad’s been up since 4, with our bags piled around us in the hostel lobby as we waited for taxis. I looked around at the sleepy faces, stuffing souvenirs into airporters and pulling on sweaters, and felt a rush of sadness that this was ending.
These 11 months have been the hardest and best thing I have ever done.
In Kosovo, I almost bought a plane ticket home. In Zambia, a dear friend left for similar reasons. But also in Zambia, I started to understand the lessons my feet were learning as I walked through this Race.
I looked around the dark, crowded bus at my squadmates sleeping in every unlikely position possible, and felt the Lord say, These are the people who will solve this with you. Their feet are walking the same ground.
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What I didn’t know then that I know now: these 35 people had only begun to stretch me. The light of the Lord in them was only a dim glow to me.
Yesterday, I sat in a coffeeshop in downtown La Paz with my journal, a fresh tattoo itching on the arch of my foot, and tried to take stock of the past eleven months. The word that kept jumping out at me from my entries the past few months was freedom.
Before the Race, I made so many decisions out of fear- of rejection, of pain, of looking stupid. Over the course of this hardest, best thing, God showed me what it would really look like if I walked through life unafraid. God healed me in places I didn’t know were bleeding, and along the way I gained friends to last a lifetime. God set me free from the things I’d hobbled myself with: doubt and fear and unresolved pain.
Solviture ambulando.
It is solved by walking.
If I had gone home, I wouldn’t have walked into the sort of confidence and grace I’ve found. Maybe I would would have learned all this at home, but my feet have touched so much ground in the past year I couldn’t have found by myself.
I am returning home weary and footsore, but with so much more grace.
With a greater understanding of the boundless love Jesus offers us, even if we walk off the beaten path into the tall grass.
Perhaps it is the tall grass where the most grace is found.
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This is my last day of the Race, and I am not who I was before. And so in this, my last Race blog, I’ll end like I never have before:
W Squad, this is for you. Thank you for being light when I was in the darkness; for believing in this thing we did even when we were exhausted; for teaching me about grace and truth and life; for loving me even when I acted unlovable. We haven’t solved everything, but I, at least, solved something, and I couldn’t have done it without you.
Love always,
Carrie
