I was just walking back to the church we were staying at when all of a sudden I heard a ball bounce. It wasn’t just any ball, it was a soccer ball. My eyes lit up because not only had it been a while since I’d played soccer, I also had been itching to play ever since I got to Serbia. There were just a couple guys passing around a ball and I went up to them in my Chacos and asked if they would be cool if I played with them. They didn’t speak an insane amount of English, but it was enough to communicate. Obviously, it’s difficult to play soccer in sandals so I took them off and decided I was going to play barefoot… on concrete… when it was almost 100 degrees. Now before you start judging me on how stupid that was, I wasn’t really thinking, I just wanted to play some soccer. After about 10 minutes I noticed the balls of my feet were hurting a bit, but I just assumed it was my calluses. About 5 minutes later I look down again and realized a blood blister had formed on my right foot and doing what any logical person would do it I ripped it open…. I’m sorry I just REALLY wanted to play. After I had gotten rid of most of the blood I continued to play as more teens showed up to play. Even though every step I took it hurt, I stuck through it because I was realized these teens could come to the church later and play games with us all! I thought it might be strange to invite them if I just played for a few minutes and left, so I decided to play until they were done.
I eventually put my Chacos back on because as you can imagine it’s painful to play on burning concrete when you have a blood blister, and I was starting to get one on my other foot. Moral of the story I played the whole game in pain, but I’m not going to say it wasn’t fun. I had a blast. After the game I invited them all to the church to hangout and play games, and that’s when I figured I would have the perfect chance to talk about Jesus to them. I would have people with me that spoke Serbian and who could translate the conversation. A couple of them said they would stop by in a few days and hangout, and I waited each day for them to come. They never did. It was annoying, because rather than going out with people at 7 each night I stayed back waiting for them to show up. I asked the Lord why did I get my hopes up just to be disappointed? Then I was reminded what those several days of waiting for them looked like.
You see, when I got back to the church (where we were staying) after the game my left foot had now developed a blood blister. I was limping pretty badly because it hurt to walk on the balls of my feet. I went up to the shower to clean my feet and one of my teammates helped me out after I got rid of all the blood. She bandaged it up and then the annoying walk began… For the next 3-4 days I struggled to walk. If I walked I was walking on the side of my feet or on my heels. I did everything in my power not to press my blisters into the grounds. (Yep more blisters formed after the initial blood blisters, super fun right?) When I walked I looked funny, clearly something was up. Try walking around on the sides of your feet for days at a time, it gets super tiring. And you betcha, you look silly doing it. Every morning I woke up expecting my feet to be better, but they weren’t. Each morning for almost a week I woke up to the same blistered feet I went to bed with the night before. I got tired of it. I was sick of not being able to walk places, and if I did I was annoyed with having to walk the way I did. So on the 4th day I tried to walk normal.
It didn’t feel great. Although the blisters were slightly better, they were still there and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling to walk on them. I continued to try and walk normal and it hurt. Bad. I was pressing those blisters against the ground and that’s what hurt. The pressing. After I started walking normal they started to get better. The next day I was able to walk without feeling a ton of pain, and the next day I could hardly tell they were there.
It suddenly hit me. That’s what we are called to do. Press in. We’re called to walk around on our feet, blisters and all. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt, in fact it’s going to hurt even more than walking on our heels. But sometimes walking normal hurts. Sometimes it’s painful. Walking normal doesn’t mean we have it all together, but it does mean we’re willing to go through the painful parts to do it. This month has been full of difficult things. I’ve had to surrender things to the Lord I never expected to. I had to press in, and there was even a couple days I was walking with a spiritual limp. It was hard to give it to the Lord, but I was able to do it. I was able to press in even though it was hurting, even though I was hurting. I can’t wait to share what the Lord did in my heart this past month, and I’ll go into that in my next blog! Keep your eyes out, yo.
My next fundraising deadline is THIS month. Here in a couple weeks I need to have $13,000 fundraised. Right now I’m about $1,500 away from that goal. Thank you SO SO SO much to anyone that has donated up to this point, but if you haven’t yet considering donating! I have to meet my deadline to be able to stay on this trip, and I know the Lord has called me to be here. Help me stay on the World Race! Tell everyone you know about it and prayerfully consider donating! Thanks again.
