The World Race blogs are filled with put together pictures.
They seem awesome.
They seem sensational.
They seem so romantic at times.
But it's not the full picture.
I haven't lied about anything.
But God has really been speaking to me about the entirety of this journey known as my World Race.
What if I began to tell the story…
…things as they have been…
…things as they truly are…
I've been believing the lie that if I told the full truth, I'd be diminishing the glory of God in the work He is doing in me and through me — in light of what has been happening to me.
I've been too ashamed to speak about the unfruitful works of darkness.
Until I can tell my full story, I want to explain how I've come to this breaking point.
I highly recommend these books to others who would ever consider doing the World Race or any mission.
1) Passport Through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances
by Kimberly L. Smith
She writes in her final chapter: "My daily prayer is that God would use my victories, wounds and transgressions forged along the way to encourage others to risk losing everything to know the life God dreams for them, for you. I pray my journey helps you to discover — then dare to uncover — whatever shame, fear or lies Satan uses to keep you bound and barred from living the life God dreams for you.'
When I read that line in the book after my last debrief — I burst into tears.
I felt a heavy stone sink into my stomach.
Suddenly all the truth I'd put a lid on and all the wounds I had stuffed inside — deep inside — threatened to explode and kill me in the process of coming to the surface.
Truth.
2) Things As They Are: Mission Work in Southern India
by Amy Carmichael
Amy writes: "Practical missionary life is an unexciting thing. It is not sparkling all over with incident. It is very prosaic at times."
I want you to know that when you read my blogs, or any World Race blogs, that you are getting a sliver of the reality that is daily happenstance.
I mean, a blog, is the glorious, brilliant, little sum of many in-between moments that are very humdrum. It's only a sliver of the pie, and yet that is what we highlight and relay through our blogs.
Even the very words "things as they are" ring as if they're brimming with freedom.
Because when we tell things as they are, we tell the truth.
And that truth sets us free.
Truth.
I want you all to know the full truth about my World Race, thus far.
I don't want to feel ashamed that if you know everything, God's glory in my mission work will be diminished.
I'm tired of painting pretty pictures.
I'm just not at peace.
I'm ready to start telling the Truth.
Even if it kills me.
And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.
Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them,
"Peace to you."
