**A HEADS UP FOR THE READER, THIS IS ABOUT TO BE REALLY LONG**
Hey everyone!
I’m writing from Draganesti which is the fourth place we have lived in Romania. The first month was mostly in a city called Craiova, following that we stayed in Brasov for about a week, then we stayed in a small town called Stoenesti and now here we are. It’s been a little crazy moving so much, especially since we’re moving again on Monday, but God is teaching me something new weekly sometimes daily. Something that he has kept bringing up these past couple of weeks is Trust.
Story time:
Growing up as a homeschooled, dyslexic and dysgraphic kid school was hard for me and, naturally, I really hated it. One thing that really came easy for me was athletics. I became really good at those kinds of things specifically downhill skiing, rugby, and weight lifting. My dad was by far my biggest supporter with sports and lifting which is really cool because the biggest reason that made me want to get in to all of that was to be like him or to make him happy.
I loved sports because I was good at them and it felt like I was carrying on tradition. My family comes from a line of athleticism where we find a sport we’re good at and take it as far as we could. On top of that we have this mindset of “If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it to the very best of my ability”. This past summer I was physically in the best shape of my life. All I wanted to do was to be as strong as I could and go ski or play rugby somewhere.
I decided to take a year off of school though because during my freshmen year of high school and a little into my sophomore year, I got caught up in worldly things that were really fun at the time but only brought me short-term pleasure. I wanted to take a year off of school so that I could grow in my faith and to make sure I wouldn’t repeat my past. so I started looking into different gap-year programs and long story short, I found the World Race. I felt like God wanted me to do it plus who doesn’t like the sound of adventure so I kind of signed up on a whim.
I felt like God wanted me to go, but as the leaving date got closer and closer, I got more and more hesitant to go and the thought of dropping out crossed my mind more than once. Obviously, I did end up going but even though I was gone, i was super scared for what I was leaving back in the States. Since doing a sport in college was and still is a dream of mine, I was terrified at the idea that I made the wrong decision. There were a lot of gap-year programs that I could’ve done instead and while they are mission trips, they also focus on a sport that you will be training in and using that to do ministry and all I could think of was “why in the heck did I not do one of those instead?!?”.
To give you an idea of where I was at with skiing, this past season I finally worked my way up to this level of racing called F.I.S. which is a French abbreviation but basically stands for the Federation of International Skiing. It’s a type of semi-pro racing but doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is on the edge of going pro. It means that it’s very competitive and there are definitely pros in F.I.S. but I’m just glad that I was able to compete at all. With rugby, I had been playing for four years and was becoming really good and getting really strong which for sure helps with both sports but I was also playing in a men’s league where training with guys twice my size definitely made me better and opened up some doors for me if I wanted to try and play down the road.
I was really worried though that going on the race meant that I was closing the door to these sports. I wasn’t able to practice rugby and skiing directly since I’m missing a team and some snow, so I focused on something that I could control. My weight. I found a gym and got a membership, before we moved, and hit anytime I could and on top of that I was buying a lot of extra food to keep my calories up so I didn’t drop weight. Once I lower my calories, I will drop weight like crazy! My dad, a couple trainers, and a coach all told me that if I keep my food up then I won’t let myself lose that much size or strength because it won’t let my body feed off of the muscle there. I know these probably sound ridiculous, but I worked so hard to get where I was and I wanted to hold on to it as tight as I could.
A little more than a month into the race in the city of Brasov, I was joining the rest of my squad for our morning time together which is when we usually do devotions. On this particular morning, my squad and I were starting the morning with an exercise called “Soaking” which is a certain kind of prayer where you go to the Lord without anything on your mind. There’s several cases in scripture where God tells us to worship him by simply being still and knowing that he is God. It’s a way for us to slow down and just acknowledge God by just “being” and letting him love us.
(“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10)
(“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.” Psalm 62:5)
(“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14)
During this exercise, God gave me a vision. It was short but pretty clear.
Vision:
God and I we’re sitting on this side of this road just watching cars go by and talking, like two old friends catching up. Then God asked me “Am I enough for you?”. I told him that of course he was! Why wouldn’t he be? Then he asked to me “Then why don’t you trust me?” And that’s where it ended.
I wanted to focus on the vision God gave me but, immediately after the soaking exercise we practiced a “Listening prayer” for someone else. This is another type of prayer where you get a piece of paper with someone’s name on it and pray for them without knowing who it is and to ask God what he has to say about them. Once you’re done you go to them and share. During the listening prayer I was praying and I was like “Ok God, what do you have to say about this person?”. He kept bringing up the vision that he gave me and I didn’t understand because I thought the vision was for me. He kept bringing it up so I wrote about it and was really NOT looking forward too giving it to someone. Usually people get positive feedback and I didn’t want to be the one guy who had constructive feedback. Like think about it, it’s like ”Oh, I had so and so and God said you matter!” or “God told me that you have the gift of grace!” And then there’s me saying ”Well… God told me you don’t trust him”. I was really not looking forward to it. When I opened up the paper, looking for the name of who to tell this to, I found that it said “You” and I was thinking very funny God.
After that was over I got to go to a coffee shop and just talk out the vision with my one of my team members Nathan and what it meant for me. God was asking me to trust him with everything I was anxious about. My skiing skills, my skills in rugby, my strength, my weight, everything! The idea of this scared me a lot and I had to remind myself what my identity was in. Sports and weightlifting are things that I do but they’re not who I am. I am an athlete and that’s one characteristic of me but it’s not a defining characteristic. Who I am is a Christian which is something that I want to define me that often slips my mind. It’s the reason I’m on a gap-year and I have to remind myself of that every now and then. I could have gone to college right away to pursue rugby and just for fun lets say I do really well and starts somewhere at a D1 college. There’ll be a day where I won’t be able to play rugby again and where my body well give out.
With Jesus, all he wants is our spirit. It doesn’t matter if I’m rich, poor, tall, short, strong, weak, athletic, paralyzed, white, black, any of it! That’s the beauty of all of it. Weather we want it or not he is going to love us all the way. I’m not saying that it’s bad or a sin for me to be really disciplined in sports a follow that dream versus going through seminar and becoming a pastor. God made me disciplined and he gave me that passion for sports and it is good, but he gave it to me for me to enjoy it, not to abuse and idolize it. It becomes abuse once I put it before God. Once I refocus my view of my life it gives me a lot more peace about everything I’m anxious of because I’m trusting him and he helps me recognize that my life is not solely focused on how well I play rugby or how strong I am. If he wants me to play rugby down the road he will make it possible. If God wants me to ski down the road, even though I’m out of practice, he will make it possible. Those are gifts that he has blessed me with so I’m not going to hold on to them tighter than I’m holding on to my faith.
My primary goal that I want for my life is to live for Christ. If he provides time to do sports also then I will but while reminding myself that sports are secondary. The idea of living for Christ is so simple but was never promised to be easy and this for me it is really difficult but definitely what I want so I’m deciding to trust him and give him my worries. Since I have left for the race I lost 15 pounds but I’m not letting myself be anxious about it and I feel a lot better. This is still a process forming though and I’m still learning how to completely let go but God has been good and I’m excited to see where he takes me next!
This was a longer blog for sure but I couldn’t seem to capture all of my thought in the shorter one so thanks for reading everyone!
