Well, today marks the one-year date since I have been home from the World Race and thought I would check in and update you on my life. I can’t even believe that it has been a whole year. On one hand, I feel like it was forever ago and on the other, I still find myself telling people that I just returned.
I realized that the last time I blogged back in February, I was substitute teaching, shortly after picked up a waitressing job, and trying to figure out what to do with my life. I thought it would be fun to sub and waitress, not have a lot of commitments, but I soon realized that I needed greater purpose in my life than those jobs could offer me. I wrote that I thought I had a heart to work for young women (late high school to college age) so I began to check into RD positions, but ended up applying for a social work position at a local non-profit agency. I now work at Community Action Agency in my home town as a Housing Advocate. We provide rent subsidies for homeless families for up to two-years. I meet with them in their homes on a weekly to bi-weekly basis to help them create goals and work towards self-sufficiency. I enjoy what I do and my co-workers help keep it fun and exciting!
I got to go on plenty of family vacations and weekends away this summer including one back to Colorado where Abe took us rafting. Kind of scary, having Abe for a guide, but he did great and we didn’t even flip.:) Once fall came around, I think I must have tried to make up for all the free time I had in the Spring because I packed my schedule FULL. I played on two softball leagues, played pick-up volleyball one night a week, helped teach a class for work one night per week, started leading a small group, became a Big Sister Mentor, took 3 trips to Chicago, went camping, attended as many of my brother’s soccer games (mostly in Indiana) as I could squeeze in, and also made time for friends. Needless to say, the last few months have been quite the whirlwind. As much as I like to be busy, life has slowed down and I am trying to enjoy the break.
As I look back over this past year, it has not been at all like I expected. It has been good overall, but hard and challenging too. I’m still trying to grasp and understand how I live out and put into practice all that I experienced and saw during the World Race in my life in America now. I feel like it has been a year filled with many major decisions. I can look back and remember many tearful conversations with my mom at the kitchen table as I made decisions about various relationships and my future. I guess I was hopeful that as I got older, the amount of decisions would lessen or at least, they would be easier to make, but am quickly learning that there will be major choices at every stage of life. After some recent occurrences, I feel restless all over again and confused of what is next in my life. I know without a doubt that God has a plan that is greater than I can imagine and I do trust Him, but it doesn’t make it any easier in the moment. The idea of having my options wide open again is both exciting and scary, but today I find encouragement in a reminder from a co-World Racer. As I feel like I have returned to a state of restlessness, where everything seems to be up in the air and I have no idea where I am supposed to be or what I am supposed to be doing and although the World Race was a once in a lifetime experience that most people don’t have the opportunity to have, it doesn’t have to be the best experience in my life and that there IS more. I have to believe that there is more. It is my hope that someday I can look back and connect the dots of all the places I’ve been and all the things I’ve experienced to see how God has been and is at work in my life. Until that time, I am choosing to continue to follow Him and trusting that He is leading me, even when it doesn’t always feel like it.
People often ask me if I would do the World Race again. I usually tell them that I wouldn’t do it a second time because I’m not sure my body and emotions could handle it, but I tell them that if I had the choice to go back before the race and decide whether or not to go, I would do it again in an instant! It was and continues to be one of the best and amazing things I have been able to be a part of in my life so far. It is something that has changed me and that I will look back on, not only for this year, but for the rest of my life.
