6 months into my Race. Half a year spent away from home.
Time has flown, but yet gone so very slow.
I am not who I was at the beginning. And that’s enough for me.
I’m doing things now that were once so unordinary for me.
My heart is scattered all over the world like I was afraid it would. Little bits and pieces in so many beautiful human souls.
My heart has been broken and rebuilt countless times in countless ways and changed so many colors beyond any canvas creation.
I’m all I wanted to be, but still not all I’d like to be when this is over. But I’d rather be who I am now than who I once was.
I never knew I could become close with so many strangers in such a short amount of time. I mean, I live 24/7 with these people. We’ve lived through so much together that it feels like we’re old friends yet brand new friends at the same time.
I’m becoming like a child but growing into an adult all in one slice. I’m learning how every bit of my childhood shaped who I am today in all of its complicated workings. Little things affected my every fear or inspiration for a reason I have about life. I am learning to step up and make decisions for myself and be an adult.
I’ve never looked so deeply inward and felt things so deeply and thought things so deeply than my mind could possibly comprehend.
I’m healing.
I bring my broken past to my attention and look at it under a magnifying glass to analyze, and then it helps me understand why I am the way I am. I remember in order to forget, to forgive, to fix. It’s like I’ve been crippled for years and I’m being bent and twisted in order to fix it all. Peeling scabs so that they heal correctly, is that a thing? If I wrote it all for you, it would take pages of blogs to explain everything. All that has come up, all that I’ve dealt with, all that I’ve learned. If you ask me in person and give me a few days notice I could maybe answer that question.
Now here we begin round three.
We are entering the Asian country called The Philippines. It’s our last country on our Race. And I await my results. I’ve changed so much, but yet I feel they are so little. I can hardly imagine what three more months will do.
There was a fear before the Race of change. There was a fear of growth and opening myself up to people I hardly knew. My journals tell me of this. Vulnerability is frightening. I was afraid to let go. Everything. It’s like I’m making the slowest most painful 180 degree turn around like a haunting creaky door. Not like I was a bad person before, I mean I was a sinner just like everyone else, I just had life all wrong and was beat up and lost believing things that weren’t true. And those things I was afraid would happen have happened, and they weren’t as bad as I thought. They were more freeing. It’s like slowly doing a surgical operation, the process of having braces, of cleaning out an old warehouse, or clearing out weeds. You have to deal with all the dirt of those things that weren’t there before to bring back to life what once was nice that was turned dirty and messy.
I’m becoming all the things I always dreamed I would be. All the free and beautiful things that make a person beautiful and inspiring. There are things I can say now and actually believe them without fear of someone else’s thoughts about me or disbelief. And I am in wondrous awe.
I am beautiful.
I’m a writer.
I’m a dreamer.
I’m dauntless.
I’m a photographer.
I am brave.
I am so loved.
I am free.
I’m alive.
And I have purpose.
6 months in and I still don’t know why He chose me for this other than wanting to change me. I’m the least right person for this role. Sometimes I think I’d feel better still sitting in my crap than going through the pain of recovering from it all. Cause this is hard. So much harder than I thought it would be dealing with all of me and my problems.
When people send me messages praising me for this adventure with hopes that I’m having a good great time, I laugh. It’s not what they think it is. It’s not grand and adventurous and full of evangelistic passion. At least not for me. It’s just life. Plain simple life. Living daily life in other parts of the world experiencing different cultures with all kinds of people hoping you shine some bit of Jesus-love-sunshine.
I know I look noble, on a mission trip for a long period of time. I look passionate about sharing the gospel and an evangelist. We are praised for doing the great commission. That was never my intention to depict of myself or my call for this journey.
That’s not why I’m here. Yes, that’s why I should be here and what it’s all for. That’s why I think I’m the least person that should be on a mission trip like this. I just want to clear the confusion that I’m a fraud. God called me on this journey at the very beginning specifically to change my heart. That was my call to apply, not my desire for missions. I have never thought of or desired or dreamed of being a missionary in such a way other than just living where I am and living intentionally, not global missions as a missionary. I never imagined I’d be a missionary or travel the world or share the gospel or be on a nine month mission trip. He’s just changing who I am by doing it all through missions. I just do the best I can do sharing the little sunshine ray of hope that I have struggled to gather about Jesus’s love in my life. I’m still such a baby believer and hardly know or understand the head knowledge I have. And it’s marvelous what God can do with our nothing. And that’s where I am. If I come to God with more than my nothing than I come with too much. All He requires is my nothing.
So here’s to round three in The Philippines. Here’s to grace, surrender, and dependence. Here’s to hope. Here’s to the way home. I’m almost there.
