So the number one reason for signing up for the world race was to leave boat life. I wanted to move onto something that would require me to devote a year of my life to serving others, but I realized that I would miss the community of friends on ships. I stumbled upon “The World Race”.
“Hey! Great! I can devote my life to God all while still living in community!”
“I have this community thing in the bag… I’ve had so much practice living with people for the past 4 years”
“The World Race community will be so much easier than ship community because everyone is Christian!”
SO NOT TRUE!
Thailand Week 1 I was ready to shut down from building up relationships with my team. The smallest things annoyed me. I dreaded praying with my team and I dreaded “team time” even more. I was ready to go home and sit and have a beer with someone who didn’t want to talk about anything holy for two seconds. My goodness I was practically day dreaming of being surrounded by atheists. I longed to hear someone swear whilst watching them chain smoke cigarettes… or anything else for that matter.
I wasn’t done with God… I still loved him even more than the month before, I was just done with being around Christians 24/7. I felt trapped but didn’t know why.
Then I did the best thing I could possibly do… I was honest with my team. I told them everything that was going on in my head and to my relief, others felt the same way but no one else had brought it up either!
The next night we got real with one another… We were honest about what we were going through.
Bringing our struggles to light broke some chains on our team and allowed freedom to really be a part of our story. There is much work that still needs to be done, but I can say now… on practically the last day of this month… that I look forward to spending time with my team. When we come together, we laugh, we tease each other, we sit there in silence, we talk about deep subjects, we offer support, and most importantly… we love each other better.
I can’t wait to continue to live life with these weird-os for the next 9 months!
