I have no doubt in my mind that I will finish out these 11
months on the race. When I signed
up for this trip, I signed up for it knowing that I was going to finish
it. Going home wasn’t an option
and still isn’t.
I would be lying though if I said I hadn’t wished that I
could just be back home recently.
I have definitely been having a lot of moments where my heart longs so
badly to just be back in the US.
It longs to be back with my family and it longs to be with my
friends. It longs to be with the
woman I love.
I have caught myself spending a lot of time just thinking
about what it is going to be like when I get home. I like to think about going back to work and I like to think
about where I’m going to live. I like
to think about riding my bicycle and I like to think about hugging my
parents. I like to think about
going to Norman to hang with Kelly and I like to think about staying in Tulsa
to take Leah out on date after date.
It is hard not to get caught up in all of those thoughts sometimes. When I’m sleeping yet another night in
a bed that I’m not super into (though in reality, I generally am SUPER “into”
it considering how much these beds generally sink in) or when I’m eating
another meal that consists of veggies and rice, it is hard for me to keep from
thinking about home. When I am
spending a week with an all-girl team (even though they are GREAT), it is hard
for me to not wish that I was with my one girl.
You get it.
Once the novelty of a trip like this wears off and it no longer feels
like an “adventure” to take a shower with a bucket or ride a cramped bus
through Africa for hours on end, you get a little perspective.
So anyways, I haven’t been frustrated with where I am
lately…I have just been checked out in a lot of ways. Definitely still being attentive to the things that I
need to be attentive to as a leader (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCIUf8eYPqA
) but my desire to learn and to grow and to see what Jesus is doing is not
there.
So that brings you up to where I was a few nights ago when I
FINALLY got to call my boy Kelly whom I have been trying to connect with for
weeks if not months. We talked for
just a little bit at first about the normal WHAT’S UP’s and HOW ARE YOU’s. Then Kelly started talking to me. This dude has this sweet thing where he
hears the voice of the Lord really clearly and I love it. He basically started telling me exactly
where I am at.
He started talking to me about how I am feeling like the
journey should be over. How my
heart feels like these first 7 months have been great but there really isn’t
that much more that is going to happen in the last 4 and that I am at a place
where I would really rather just come home. He started telling me that, in a lot of ways, I have let
myself come home already (in my thought life he meant).
Then, he started telling me why he thinks that I am still
here. He was talking to me about
how much the Lord did in my heart and how much He molded me during the first
3-5 months of this trip. He said
that, in a lot of ways, the Lord may have already taught me a lot of the big
things that He wanted to teach me this year. He said though that if I just went home right now, I could
easily fall back out of being the person that Jesus has grown me into this
year. I would lose a lot of what
He has done in my heart. Kelly
gave me some sweet perspective on how, so often, once we learn something from
Jesus, we want to move on and we just assume that the things we have learned
will continue to be a part of who we are, even without working to make those
things habitual in our lives.
Kelly helped me get some perspective on why Jesus made this
an 11 month long journey for me and not just a 7 month long journey. I can’t say that I know for sure why
Jesus want’s me here these last four months and I can’t say what He is wanting
to teach me. But Kelly at least
got me fired up about looking at the things that He already HAS taught me and
trying to intentionally make those things part of who I am for the rest of my
life. Kelly was right, there are a
lot of things that Jesus has done in my heart that I could easily lose if I was
back home right now and didn’t have the environment that I currently have to
let those things become WHO I AM.
So who knows? I
don’t. I don’t know what all that
really means for the next 4 months but I do know that I want to be here in mind
and spirit, not just body. I think
that, at the most basic level, I just needed Kelly to remind me that there is
never a point to being where Jesus has you if you’re not going to really be
there. It is rough because I am
absolutely still homesick and I still struggle with wanting to be home right
now. But I think that I just need
to remember to take those thoughts captive and choose to release them so that I
can really continue see what the Lord is doing here and now.
That was probably one of the biggest things that Jesus
taught me during the first few months of this trip. He taught me how much I love following His leading. Lately though, I just haven’t been
looking for His leading here. My
mind has been preoccupied with where He might be leading me 4 months from now. Gotta stay present.
That all said, I am excited to go into this last phase of
the race. Even though there are
still 4 months left, it feels like we are about to enter the final leg of the
journey as we head to Asia. I’ll be
in Thailand on Wednesday, ready for hopefully one of the manliest months of my
life.
I know this was pretty scattered and really, as I read back
through it, it seems kind of hard to tell from what I wrote what really changed
in my head. I think that all that
happened in the end is that I re-decided that I don’t want to waste a moment of
this amazing adventure that Jesus has me on. I want to be just as excited about these last 4 months as He
is. Ready to buckle down and
continue letting Him mold me.
Kelly just helped me realize that this wasn’t going to happen if I
continued letting my mind be living in July/August in the USA.
I’m in Uganda today and Thailand on Wednesday. All of me. Boom.
