Processing my struggles and putting them into words is hard.
I have been going through a weird life transition lately – ‘lately’ being loosely defined as the last two years of my life. It’s been going on ever since I finished up with my undergraduate program, whether I realized it or not, and now that I’m at the back end of things and getting ready to leave for a full year in January, I feel like I have a lot that I need to emotionally unpack. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, first let me say that that is not my intent. God has been using what I’ve been going though as a teaching experience, and I feel like I’m just now beginning to learn the lessons.
As I have said before, I am someone that thrives on being busy. I’ve spent a good amount of time living that out, often to a fault. My first four years at Whitworth were where this really started to take shape, as I balanced full credit loads, studying abroad, internships, part-time jobs, and church and family involvement. I kept it all up without driving myself insane, but at the same time I see now that what I was really doing was falling into a spiritual rut without even noticing. I was going through all the motions to look like I had it all together, and most people probably thought I did. The truth is, though, that God was crowded out by too many friends and too many events, and those four years were probably the furthest away from Him that I’ve ever been.
Through all of this, what kept me grounded and what eventually led me out of my rut were the dreams that I had for my future (corny, but true). I wrote here about where my heart for missions came from, and even in this rut my ‘big picture’ stayed the same. I needed to go to grad school. I felt called to mission work. My career goal was to work for a Christian non-profit. Before starting my career, I wanted to go on the World Race. I had these dreams, but my eyes were closed to God’s desire for my day-to-day, and closed to the heart changes I know He so desperately needed me to make in order for those dreams to become a reality.
It was only when those ‘other’ things started falling away – when I had less to be preoccupied with – that I realized there was something missing. Most of my friends graduated and moved away, I got my first ‘real’ job, and I moved through grad school without much else going on. I didn’t have as many friends around to distract me, and many of the events and programs I was regularly involved with ended with graduation. I found myself (and still find myself, especially now that grad school has ended as well) with a lot more free time than I was previously used to. Just because I realized that I needed to make a change, though, doesn’t mean it came immediately. That free time wasn’t always used in the most productive ways, and I fell into lazy habits because it wasn’t as easy for me to find constant entertainment as it had been.
This is the point where you probably want to tell me, “Welcome to being an adult. It doesn’t get any easier,” or some variation of the same. Rest assured – I have already been told. Like I said before, this is getting into some dangerous territory that could easily veer off into a pity party for how I don’t know what to do with myself. Again, don’t worry – that is not where I’m headed.
My point here is not that my life sucks, or that I’m bored and lonely all the time. None of that is true. What is true is that my life looks different now than it has been, and I have needed to figure out how to adjust. God has been teaching me, through these last two years, that not having plans is okay. He’s been teaching me that time alone is good for me, and not something to be avoided at all costs. He’s been teaching me that, even when I think I need to have every minute of my life planned out, what I often need instead is to just take a time out, back up a bit, and breathe. These time outs, in turn, should be used to spend time with God, and to grow in my relationship with Him, and now I’ve been putting in that extra effort to do that every day.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I also changed churches. I don’t have time to unpack everything that went into that decision, but the baseline was that I just needed something different. I needed a change. The community that has come alongside me in the last year and a half to support and encourage me as a result has been essential in helping me out of the rut that I found myself in, and in getting me to understand many of the things God has been trying to teach me for so long. Because of all of this, for the first time in a long time, I feel like my eyes have been opened to those day-to-day heart changes that I know God wants me to make, and during these last two years, I’ve slowly begun to rediscover the reasons why I wanted to go on the Race in the first place.
Even through all of this, I haven’t fully adjusted to the way my life is right now, and if I’m being honest, I’m desperate for the incredible community of World Racers I know I will be surrounded by for an entire year as soon as January rolls around. Until then, I am still dreaming every day. I’m dreaming of all of the things that God will do through me and my team all over the world in the next year. I’m dreaming of all of the lifelong friendships and connections I will make during our time traveling and doing ministry together. I’m dreaming of the way God is going to shake up my world in a way that I’m not at all prepared for. And I’m dreaming, before the Race has even started, of what my life could look like when it’s all over, because in reality, this is only the beginning.
