i grew up on an island close to charleston, sc. it was such an ideal place to grow up. i was allowed to ride my bike pretty much anywhere, play in the street, talk to strangers…ok, not really, but you get the idea. it was awesome. our house is 2-3 blocks away from the ocean and the same distance from the waterway on the other side of the island. smack dab in the middle. needless to say, i grew up in and around the water.
growing up, sports became my passion, my life. this was completely my choice, not like on those lifetime movies when the parents force kids to do things so they can live vicariously through them. i loved sports and was successful at all that i tried. this progressed and i started playing sports for the high school, while i was still in middle school. in one of my first seasons, one of the older girls befriended my friends and i. this was my first look at discipleship. she spent time with us, drove us around, learned about us, taught us things, and eventually asked us to join her at church and later a small Bible study that she led. this relationship changed my life. her selfless love changed my life. i found a place where i felt loved at that church and with the people i met there. i also got my first glimpse at what it meant to live as a follower of Christ.
time went by, my life still predominitely filled with sports, through the end of high school. the decision of college arose and i choose to go to a large university and to not play sports. i didnt think about it at the time, but my life could have fallen apart, right then and there. the things i had trained for, scheduled my life around, sacrificed for, been hurt by, struggled through…were coming to an end. (to put it into perspective i had practice or a game every single day of my life, minus a few days in the summers, from 7th grade-12th grade.) this was huge. luckily God had been teaching me, and relatively without my knowledge, that there was more to life, and that sports or anything else for that matter didnt define me. i could rest easy in the fact that my life had purpose and i wasnt lost searching for it. with that said, the transition to college was a rather smooth one.
in college i was blessed with the most amazing girls that i got to call my roommates (seen above). we are all very different and come from different home-lifes and upbringings. they truly became my family away from home. they challenged me in ways i could never explain, and most of the time by simply living their lives they way they were choosing- with integrity- for the Lord.
i am now post-college. i was very fortunate to be offered a job right as i graduated, by the company i was interning with my last semester. the land of 9-5’s (or 9-6 for some of us) is strange to me. it is not as i imagined. sometimes i cant put exactly what i think about it into words, so for now i’ll leave it at that.
at work one day, i was crusin’ the world of facebook when i came across one of my friends status’…something along the lines of ‘check out my sisters blog.’ as you can probably guess, the said blog was a world race blog. i quickly read it and many others. my heart was moved. it took everything in me to fight back the tears that were forming as i sat at my desk at work. i knew it was something i at least had to take a step of faith towards and apply for. i wasted no time and had the application filled out by the end of the day. so now i sit here, at that same desk a few months later, writing in my very own world race blog.
