This is part 1 of a two part blog, the last blog I’ll write on the World Race.
Thank you for being a part of my journey.
Before reading this, to set the tone and shed some light on the condition of my pondering mind, I recommend playing this song as you read.
Ready?
Let’s
b
e
g
i
n.
I’m currently with my team on one of the last nights together. We’re looking at the photos and videos that have documented this past year. Looking back and seeing all that God has done in and through each other and oneself is indescribably bittersweet.
This is it.
The World Race, 11 countries for 11 months, is coming to an end.
To think that this is one of the last nights with my team, one of the last blogs I’ll write, one of the last moments overseas (at least for now), is so hard to fathom and grasp. So many emotions run through ones heart and mind as the reality that this extraordinary trip, this incredible adventure, this long and great crusade for which one has strived, struggled, and successfully conquered, is now at its closing scene.
In about a week from now I’ll be home. Fast wifi, free refills, the independence of traveling without a companion, a bedroom by myself, the ability to eat whatever I want whenever I want, and homeland luxuries, these things that have been but a thought and idea for the past year will once again become the ever-present environment of my life. These things that I have longed for since the day I left now at the palm of my hands. And with them dripping through my fingertips and watering my tongue, I find myself now reassessing how significant these things really are to me.
And not just the infinitesimal flickers of light that glimmer far off in the distance, across the ocean of anticipation as I look out, sitting on the coast of this quest, waiting for my departing vessel to way anchor and return home from her voyage. But the colossal beams of luminosity that have shone brightly like a lighthouse on the rocky shores of false alarms and “not quite yet.” These radiating beauty’s of illumination that I’ve kept and cherished in my heart for so long. These things, my heart has now found slippery when wet; soaked by the depleting, yet freeing truth: “Follow Me.”
Community
Home
Dreams
Everything has mutated like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. Church
But it’s not simply a redesign of my purpose. Career
It’s not a “start from scratch” toss of old dreams or a fresh start. LIFE
No.
It’s nothing new.
It’s simply opening the eyelids of my perspective just a little bit more and seeing with an innovative viewpoint, like once seeing a painting from only a few inches away and now stepping back a few feet to witness the grandeur of the masterpiece.
It’s like a crack in the glass wall of my soul that has longed to shatter this separation of indefiniteness and through the crack breathe in the breeze of eternity.
It’s the “eureka” of realization that engulfs the opportunist and eradicates the skeptic; the whisper from the Creator that soothes the soul and reminds oneself that He is He, as His apostle says,
“… Who is able to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think…”
As ludicrous as it may seem to me because of all that He already has done, God still has more for me then what I could ask or think of. And not just wifi and refills, but even my community, my home, my dreams, my church, my career, my life. Like a mortal man being hit by the incomparable thrust of Infinite, I find myself different, altered, changed, in unimaginable ways at the end of the Race.
Nothing in my life will ever be the same because I am not the same.
God has created my life into an elegant catastrophe, and now is leading me towards a new open road with a sign that says “Next Chapter.”
And while sitting here with my team, with Explosions In The Sky’s song “It’s Natural To Be Afraid”, an instrumental, wordless song in which its words sing to my soul, I find myself terrified.
This old nemesis, this turbulence, this unrest, this instability, like Peter’s eyes fixed on the storm, brings me to a fear felt before; the same fear when I embraced my mother one last time before I began this journey, or on the landing strip in Guatemala in the first month, or on a polluted church floor within the slums of the Philippines the fourth month, or in the desolate, dark streets of Malaysia the sixth month.
I’m scared of what’s to come, where it is I will go, how to get there, and when I shall arrive. What God has in stored for me is exceedingly far greater then what I could ask or imagine, and like Peter who simply had to keep his eyes on Christ, I struggle to not let the power of uncertainty take my eyes off the Prize…
But although these moments come with the full force of a hurricane, my expectation that stands on the solid foundation of God’s authenticity and realism can never be overcome by these trivial winds of anxiety and will never overcome this anticipation of the next chapter. With passport in hand and home on the horizon, I find myself on the edge of the conclusion of my journey. I’m scared, but I take heart.
“What does God have for you next?”
A question I often ask myself and have as much assurance of an answer to as the question
“What is home?”
(A question I still don’t have the answer to.)
But with a pulsating heart for charting out the blank spots of the map of life and an infinite amount of unleaded faith in the caravan of my soul, I will set off onto the kingdom journey God has for me.
I smell the coastal waters of home approaching, like the first breaths after a coma.
And with tired eyes, tired mind, and tired soul, here I
c
o
m
e
The end… is just the beginning.
