Right now I’m sitting in my friend’s apartment in Wheaton, Illinois. Two years ago I found out about the World Race a few miles from here. I was just surfing Facebook one night and came across a group about it, and that “chance” encounter changed my life.
Last night while I was driving up here from Atlanta I got a fundraising alumni call from Wheaton College. The girl calling is a freshman there currently and she asked me what I’m doing now that I’ve been out of school for a year and a half. I briefly explained what the World Race is and she got extremely excited. We talked for another forty-five minutes and finally decided to get coffee while I’m here to talk more about it. She was so intrigued by the idea of the race and the global impact she could have by doing it. Hearing the excitement in her voice made me think back to the night that I first found out about the race. I was supposed to be writing a paper, and instead I stayed up practically all night reading blogs while my heart pounded and my brain flew through ideas about how much I would love to do that someday. And now, two years later, here I am back in Wheaton with a degree and the World Race in the rearview mirror.
I have been home for about two weeks now and I haven’t blogged at all. I promise that I have a lot more to say and many more stories to share with all of you, but so far it’s been hard to write. Every time I sit down to write I can’t focus or I have too many scattered thoughts to put them into any kind of logical order. The collective weight of the many transitions I’ve lived through in the last year and a half are all catching up with me. So the blogs may be slow in coming, but they will come. As I process this year and its implications for my future and the future of my ministry, you will hear about it. You are as much part of these stories as I am, and you deserve to read about all the things God did through us this year.
But before we get into all of that, here is the last travel day video. Yes, it’s entirely too long, but I decided not to edit it down because it’s really for my squad. It’s for all of us to watch and remember and begin the process of transitioning to the next chapter of our lives. To relive the end helps to begin the next part. We ended our race strong, and I will share a special story about that in one of my next couple blogs. But for now, if you happen to have some free time on your hands and you want to live life in our world for half an hour, go for it!
