When I look back over this past year, it has been one crazy, beautiful whirlwind of glimpses of beauty, heartfelt worship, tears of brokenness, freedom, laughter. It was fairly easy coming up with one main theme that I feel God has been teaching me this entire journey. It started in Haiti and he has continued to show me this in Vietnam. He is a God who brought up life out the dust from the ground. He can take something lifeless and dead, and give it meaning, give it purpose.
He makes beautiful things out of the dust, and He can make beautiful things out of us.
Coming on this race, I had just lived one of the hardest years of my life. I needed new meaning. I needed new direction. Inside I was dead and lifeless, just going through the motions. I needed God do something big. I wasn’t sure what that was, but he knew all along. He brought me on a journey of brokenness, to an encounter with his love, to find my true identity.
The second Sunday on the race and in Haiti, I remember watching this eight minute video of Judah Smith and it wrecked me. Little did I know this video was God’s way of introducing me to what he had in store for me this year. This video summarizes every step on my journey to realizing my brokenness, to knowing how much God actually loves me, to living in the freedom that God is enough and the freedom to be me. It was not until Bolivia that the race really became hard for me.
Bolivia was one of my hardest months physically and spiritually. Bolivia was the month I dealt with my past. One month before the race, my divorce was finalized and so this was still very present in my life. October was also what would have been my 2 year anniversary. There were a lot of different emotions that month. I remember reading one night in my tent and the author was talking about stained glass windows. They are shards of broken, useless glass, but someone decided to create something out these broken pieces. But the cool thing about stained glass windows is even though they are pretty, there true beauty is not revealed until the light shines through them. I remember reading this and the sound of bolivian crickets and the river slowly drowned out to my tears. I prayed and asked God that night that he wouldn’t let my story be useless broken pieces. I prayed he would make something beautiful out of it and let his light shine through it. During an all night prayer night, I let go of a lot of things I had been holding on to. That was the beginning of my healing process.
To make that stained glass window beautiful, it requires a little fire and chisel work. It is not a fun process. Throughout the rest of South America, God continually poked and prodded at things in my past, old wounds and hurts, things I needed to give over to him. The first four months of the race were some of the hardest. But all along God was preparing me for the next stage, to encounter his love.
You want to have an amazing encounter with God’s love, go to Africa. Through seeing poverty, praying healing over people, feeding hundreds of orphans, going door to door everyday sharing God’s love…is when you really start to question and wonder about that love. Why do you love me? Why do you care about me? When this world has given You nothing, yet you chose to die for them. Why not just cast me aside, I am a sinner and a disappointment to you. I am barabas, why did you let me go free? I don’t deserve this life you have given me. I deserve the punishment. But you said, Go live your life. You are forgiven. Who can fathom such love, such grace? It’s so hard to even write about it, because no words do it justice. It is your blood Jesus that gives me new life. You make me complete. You break my chains, God. You gave your life to give me my life. No greater love than this, that man lay down his life for his brother. “What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus.” God is so good and his love truly is amazing. Many people claim to know Jesus, but my fear is they have never really had an encounter with his love and grace. This was me. I knew everything about Jesus and could church talk all day, but I didn’t have an i tamale relationship with him. God pursues his children with a passionate love, but we have to receive his love.
As I entered Asia and the last four months of the race, God began to work on my identity in him. I dealt with the past, I knew God’s love for me, now it was time for me to figure out who I am in Him. God used his word to speak truth into my life, but he also used my squad to speak life into me. I have never really had people prayerfully speak truth into my life, but it is what I needed. So many times we believe lies about ourselves when God says otherwise. I needed to be reminded of these truths and allow others to see things in me that I do not see in myself. Theses are just a few words people have spoken over me this past year: Steadfast, overcomer, not easily, shaken, wise counsel, redeemed. It does not matter how many times people tell you something, you have to believe it yourself for it to really matter. God showed me that my identity is not in my past, it is not in my occupation, it is not in my reputation. The only identity that cannot be shaken is in Christ Jesus.
This year has been one of renewal. At the beginning of this trip, my story was not one I bragged about. It was something I liked to hide and keep to myself. I was not proud of it. I was embarrassed by it. My circumstances had left me feeling empty, and I knew I needed a change. I had never really had that divine encounter with God’s love before, so I was searching for something more. I needed to know God more and I found myself and healing in the process. As I look back now, I can honestly say that prayer I prayed in Bolivia to make something beautiful out something broken, he has answered 10x over and I am seeing new ways he is continuing to do so. He is a God of reconciliation and he is a redeeming God. He is in the business of taking dead things and bringing them to life. I know God is making all of these things for my good.
Lastly, I want to share a prophecy a preacher spoke over me in Zimbabwe. He told me when he looked at me he saw color. Colors so bright that they lit up the room and draw people in. Colors that would bring light into any darkness. He used the example of a giant gum ball machine lol, but I like to think of that stained glass window. Broken shards of my life, that God chose to redeem and create something beautiful to bring color and light to others lives. He made something beautiful out of me and he can make something beautiful out of you. But remember, the window’s true beauty is only when you let the light shine through it.
