We are currently 35,000 feet above somewhere in the Pacific
Ocean on a flight from Guangzhou, China to Los Angeles, California. We are
approaching the International Date Line and the start of November 19th
take 2. To most of you reading this, November 19th doesn’t seem like
an important date, but to us, it’s the day that’s been in our minds and on our
countdowns for months. When we looked at our watches this morning and they read
Saturday, 11/19, our hearts did a little jump. November 19th is the
day we come home.
Eleven months ago we embarked on a journey. Even though we
were told at training camp to drop them, we all came in with expectations for
this journey. For most of us it’s been nothing like we expected. It’s been
simultaneously the best and hardest thing we’ve ever done. There were days when
we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were living God’s will and being
truth and light to people. On those days we hoped the journey would never end.
There were also days when we felt sick, exhausted, or purposeless. On those
days we thought this day would never come. But it’s here, and in seven hours we
will set foot on American soil and this journey will come to an end. We will
say very bittersweet goodbyes in the LAX baggage claim and take our first steps
into the next chapters of our lives. We have people to see, places to go, and
lives to live.
It would be easy to look back in a couple weeks and think
this had all been a dream. People at home have continued living their lives in
our absence. Marriages have happened, babies have been born, and people have
lost loved ones. Life didn’t stop just because we were away. I read a blog from
another Race alumnus a few months ago when she came off the field. She compared
the World Race to the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. It will be very easy for us to feel like we
just stepped into the wardrobe and disappeared for a year and then came back
without anyone realizing we were gone. Did it really happen? Did we really just
do that? Did we really see all the things that we saw and have the amazing,
painful, touching, shattering, changing experiences that we had? Can anyone
tell that we’re different besides us?
A year ago, right after our training camp, I heard the song Beautiful Things by Gungor for the first
time. As soon as I heard it I knew that I was supposed to make a video with it
for the end of our race. The only problem was that I had never made a video
before. I didn’t know anything about shooting or editing videos, but I was
determined to learn, and I just knew that this song was for the end, so I put
it on my iPod and saved it. This past month in Phnom Penh our squad leaders
approached my teammate Joel and I and asked us to make a video for final
debrief about our squad and the transformations we have all undergone this
year. As soon as the request left Vanessa’s mouth I knew what song to use. I
had been saving it for a year, and I knew that now was the time to use this
song to tell our stories.
The truth is that the World Race did happen. We did leave
for a year, and although people continued living without us, we also continued
living without them. We lived in abundance even in the midst of having little.
We saw things that most people don’t even know exist. We saw God do things that
many people believe stopped happening thousands of years ago. And we changed. So
in seven hours 48 people will step off of a plane in LAX and go back to the
places we came from, but we won’t be the same 48 people that you remember. We
are 48 people who have seen the world and are ready to change it, so get ready!
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things out of us.
You are making me new.
These are our
stories…
