As I am approaching the end of this year and the race (Only 7 more weeks left) , I have been doing a lot of reflecting. I have been going back to each country/month and writing down all of the basic things that happened so I have it all in one place. I then have been taking the time to pray for each country and really give that time over to God. By doing this, I have been choosing to “close the door” on each country/month.
God has been talking to me a lot about closing doors. At our last debrief a month and a half ago, we were challenged to accept that the season of The World Race would be ending and that a new season would be coming. We were essentially asked to close the door on the season of the race. At that time, I didn’t really understand what it meant to close the door on a season.
Since high school, I have gone in and out of cultures at least every year. I graduated from a four thousand student, suburban high school in 2006 and then moved to a small town in central Illinois for college at a university of two thousand five hundred students. I lived there for three and a half years while visiting suburbia during the holidays and the summers. During my last semester of college I did my student teaching in Chicago. I lived in the south side of Chicago and commuted every day to the north side to teach at a large magnet high school. I then went back to central Illinois to graduate college.
I went home for the summer again and then moved to Kentucky. I lived in Kentucky in a town of 800 people in the Appalachian mountains for a year only going home to visit Chicago suburbia on the holidays. I then went home for 2 weeks at the end of August and left to be in a traveling Christian band for a year. I traveled in the midwest and the east coast in the Fall, Ukraine in January, Romania in February, Germany in March, April and May and back to the midwest for the summer. When that year ended, I went and lived with my parents in suburbia for 4 months for the first time since high school. Then I left on the World Race.
I have moved around and experienced SO much in the last 6 years of my life, but I have never really taken the time to accept them. I have never sat down and taken the time to believe that I did all of these things and that they were over. (If you have ever done some intense cultural experiences, then you probably understand the concept of accepting that they’ve happened and acknowledging that they are over. If you don’t do this, you typically get stuck in the middle with “culture shock”)
I was never taught how to manage all of these cultural switches. Therefore, my brain has been constantly trying to understand everything. But I have never actually been able to see my life as a collective unit of all of these different experiences. I have only been able to focus on the experience at the moment, but haven’t been able to see the big picture. The reason being, I had never before emotionally closed the doors on these experiences.
While being in this little Moldovan village, God has been walking me through closing different doors in my life. I have literally looked at a world map and have spoken out loud “In August of 2010, I moved from Naperville, Illinois to McKee, KY” Then I think of different things that happened that year. Once God has brought me through all of the major things I need to remember, I am challenged to say “Good Bye”. I literally, say things out loud like, “Good bye Kentucky” or “Good Bye Ukraine”. By doing this, I have been choosing to accept the season has passed.This process has not been easy because I have had to accept that bad things have happened and that good things are over. However, I have more brain space available to truly see my life as the big picture and be more fully present in the season I am in.
I want to ask you, What are you the seasons in your life God wants you to accept and close? Was there an old house or area you moved from that you haven’t let go of? Is there a relationship you still are tied to emotionally ? Have you been to a culture drastically different than yours that you haven’t sat down and accepted? What is it in your life that you need to accept so you can close the door and move on?
Right now, I publicly choose to believe and accept that my year of traveling with the World RAce 2013 will end on December 6th, 2013. On December 6th, I will fly home to America and living with my mom in Illinois. I will say good bye to the people I have lived and traveled with for a year and I will say hello to my family, friends and boyfriend back home. I choose to accept that this season is ending and a new season is beginning and that the next season will be exactly what I need.
