Hindsight is 20/20. It’s a common saying that has proven itself true in my life. It’s much easier to identify lessons and honor challenging moments once they’ve been wrapped up somehow. Whether it’s leaving a difficult country on the Race (here’s lookin’ at you, China & Vietnam!) or gaining some space on an unhealthy relationship, it’s always easier for me to pinpoint the good when I’m outside of it. Yet, I want to be a person who sees both the struggle and the beauty and calls them both valuable in the midst. I started to tell this story in the middle of Vietnam and it’s strange to reread it and know the timing of things. I was a few days away from getting the sickest that I’d been on the whole Race in the middle of a month that was incredibly challenging to me. Yet, here’s the story I began to tell:
It’s very strange to understand clearly that my circumstances are not ideal and I spent a lot more time counting down than I’d like to admit yet know in the deepest places of my soul that what’s happening now is building on what’s been. When ministry isn’t great and communication is lacking but I choose to take hold of joy and release control, that’s a serious victory. When I speak and live and love from a place of honesty rooted in sufficiency, my heart skips a beat to celebrate. Perhaps it’s because I remember what it’s like to not live those things. This growth and change is not something that happened overnight yet the results are something that crept up strangely and took hold all at once.
I first felt the difference within me in Thailand but it felt kind of like spotting a rabbit in a meadow: I had it in sight but knew that I couldn’t make any sudden movements or loud noises or it would likely be scared off. Team leading was a beautiful season for me in which the Lord redeemed so much. I led from a place of authenticity and loved with deep realness and those girls became a little family for me. We laughed hard and often. We asked good questions and cared about the responses. We prayed fervently for one another and told each other the truth.
The beauty of that month prepared me for the next two in ways I never could have imagined. Two of us said hard goodbyes to our team and contacts in Phang Nga and traveled to Chaing Mai to meet our moms for Parent Vision Trip. It was the next building block for me to spend some time with my mom. It was a safe and real place to test out some of the changes I felt were stirring within me. I was able to be real and not hold back and found myself truly motivated by love. I lived a new normal that I hadn’t even really realized was new until that week. After a whirlwind few days, we boarded a bus yet again to travel to debrief. Along with the travel and debriefing, changes were also imminent. We huddled together as a team of women knowing that we were potentially being called “team” for the last time. We sat in hard plastic chairs, knees touching and smiles big as we recalled our time together. We shared stories with our squad mentor and answered her questions posed to help us put words to our experience. As we shared, I began to realize that one of the most beautiful things that we did for one another was just walk alongside each other. No one was pulling the cart on their own but everyone was hitched up, committed to pulling the cart, whatever it might contain. We did team well. No one’s attitude was allowed to hinder our progress because we somehow shared this unspoken rule of consistently choosing joy.
Debrief progressed with remembrance and celebration. One evening, we trekked to the beach with our teams from Months 5-7 to close that season. We worshipped together, huddled on blankets to protect our bottoms from the sand while the gulf lapped lazily at the shore. That night on the beach was so much more than beautiful scenery and valuable remembrance. We huddled around a set of paper lanterns as a team, helping one another light and release them one by one. Some teams were telling stories and sharing memories and our team worked quietly together. I remember a speechlessness that we put on like a favorite old sweater. Our team was not generally one characterized by our ability to embrace silence but it seemed like everything of importance had been said and there was something sweet about just sharing the moment. The process of releasing the lanterns did not go at all as planned. They were released at various times and phases: some too early and some at the right time. Some careened into the Gulf, not having enough gusto to fly. Some started to take off and fell in time to be saved from the damaging water to try again. I lit my flame and hunched down beside my teammates, holding the paper against the damp sand to create enough heat for flight. “You’re ready!” But, I wasn’t quite. I let the lantern go and it lifted up a bit before starting to crash. I raced forward and grabbed it before it reached the gulf. As my hands gripped the base of this frail paper thing, I looked beside me and there stood a former teammate. He crouched with me on the beach and patiently coached me through a successful lantern release.
As that lantern released, so did many other things within me. The teammate who crouched beside me was not my best friend or my first choice of companions. He was someone that had been generally hard for me to love (the feeling was mutual) and our communication had been consistently difficult (again, mutual). For the four months we’d been on a team together, we’d challenged each other over and over again, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in selfish, frustration-fueled ways. Yet there he was, crouching beside me and cheering me on. The lantern released and so did my expectations and my rights to have control and my entitlement. I decided to put down the idea that things must be either difficult or beautiful, valuable or something to muddle through because those things really all live together in the same apartment. They’re on the same team. So even if they don’t always get along and agree with one another, they work and fight and figure it out. It was fitting for me to be crouching alongside the person I was as I had this realization.
Lantern from Heather Roush on Vimeo.
The release and realization brought about something beautiful over the final 3 months of the Race: that things can be both hard and good and I always have the choice between frustration and joy. I can choose to celebrate in the middle of something hard and live out the story that I truly believe: that God is good and life is hard but there’s always hope in Him. Or I can preach all of my woes to God and the universe and help convert everyone around me to the belief that the world is innately terrible and my misery is infectious.
Cambodia and Vietnam were difficult months where we truly had to fight hard for the good and we didn’t always win. But the culmination of all of this came in Nepal when every single day was filled with good. Often, it was good that we chose and fought for but it was there nonetheless, living among us in the form of communion with God and one another. The good was in hearts that were ready to serve and frustrations that were readily let go and a quickness to laugh over silly misunderstandings and forgive. And the most beautiful thing was that the good and the joy were fully available in every moment of every day in Nepal and are also here in Florida when I take the time to clothe myself in humility and claim gratitude. Joy is not circumstantial but a gift that comes with knowing that my hope is never confined to my situation but resides in Christ alone.
