“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered grass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all.” – Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
Have you ever watched ABC’s TV show “The Middle”? A show about family from Indiana doing what a family does best – struggle. The middle is not a place that many people want to be, but that is the place where we live most of our lives. It is not a glamorous place, much like Indiana.
I am in the middle of a story. The past few months I have found it difficult to write down my thoughts and feelings. The pages in my journal are short and struggled over. Our monthly newsletters, once a joy, become a mountain pass that is impossible for me to climb. Writing a blog has become a task equivalent to putting my shoulder against house sized boulder and willing it to move.
Malaysia was hard, but it is starting to look more like a story. I can start to tell it in detail, but living those days did not look like a story at all. I could not find a story to tell. Some days I felt like I could not find meaning.
We lost a team member. During our travel between Malaysia and Guatemala one of ours decided that his World Race was done and chose to go home to continue his journey. Our team is an emotionally mature team, and as we move forward we will overall be okay, but this change still left a mark. It is still something we are feeling. It is a part of the story that does not make any sense at all. Another one of our squad mates went home as well.
We have seen six members of our z-squad family move on to different journeys, and sometimes we have to remember that as we grieve them, that they are just heading home, they are not dead. But sometimes it feels like that is the case. You get used to doing life with this group of people, it is hard to see them walk down a different path.
The World Race makes one heck of a story. You have all read them in our blogs. Watched them in our videos. Seen them in our pictures. So many stories.
The problem is living these stories. So many of our stories have no real ending. We have to leave, life moves on, lives move on. We will never know how the life of every person we prayed for turned out. All of those babies I held in Uganda and prayed over, I will never know if they received the life that their mothers wanted for them. I do not know the plans for them.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11
I am in a story. And when I read the quote by Margaret Atwood in a book called Rising Strong by Brene Brown I realized that is exactly how I felt. I do not want to take pictures. I do not want to make a video. I do not want to write a blog. I would try, and find my mind blocked, my emotions a bit numb, and no word or picture or video was “right” enough to capture this time.
I am not alone. This is not just a World Race thing, this is a life thing. Some moments a chapter is beginning. Other moments a chapter is ending. Some moments begged to be written about. Other times it takes months or years to look back and see the story.
I am in Guatemala living at a girls home. Doing life with about 30 girls ages 3-18. But that is a story that you will have to wait for, because right now I feel storiless. And sometimes that makes me feel like I am letting people down. Happy videos and kids smiling in pictures. I will not have any for a while, and I know, I still need to make videos for Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia. But right now I just cannot.
It is not that life is awful. It is not that I feel terrible every day, but day to day life lacks a little bit . . . it lacks something. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but I am in the middle of a season, in the middle of a story. Something is lacking. Time and perspective probably.
But I wanted to write this blog. I wanted to remember that it is okay for not every moment to be a story written. I want future Racers to hear that time on the Race is sometimes times of struggle, of boredom, of blah. I want all Christians to realize that we cannot stay on the mountains, but sometimes life is in the valley, and sometimes the valley does not always make for an exciting story in the moment.
But give it time, and the blogs will be posted. Give it time and the videos will be made. Give it time and the pictures will start popping up. Give me time . . .
God is working. Always working.
And I know in some time I will look back and want to write this story. But for now, I want to listen to the thunder as the next Guatemalan storm rolls in. I want to smell the wet grass as I live for a time in the rainy season in Mazatenango. I want to hug all of the wonderful girls who are full of hurt who live at this home.
But mostly, I want to listen to the thunder. Curl up, and read a good book. Unfortunately, that does not make for the most exciting blog.
But that is life. And the World Race is life. Ups, downs, Lefts, rights, Wrong turns, wrong steps, mountain top moments and blog worthy days. Then there are the times in the middle. I wanted to write a blog about those times, they do not always get the attention they deserve.
