Today (06/24/2020) marks 365 days in America. Sometimes it feels like I’m still trying to find my place here, still learning how to be home. Other times, it feels as though I’ve never left. I’m not sure which is worse.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about my year overseas. I’ve processed as much as I could, but there is still so much more I have yet to think about. I’ve meditated on what the World Race has meant to me – the most important things I’ve learned about myself, the world, others, and our Father. It’s a lot to try and process on your own. Over the past year I’ve had the help of a therapist, lots of phone calls with old world race friends, family, and my boyfriend. Here’s what I’ve learned:
The World Race was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. That’s one thing I know for sure. There were some days I absolutely hated it, nothing about it was fun, or exciting, or the least bit enjoyable. I kept asking myself why I was so excited to do this in the first place. Why did I want this so bad? I was sick and tired of living in dirty places, taking cold bucket showers, sleeping on dirty floors, eating food with bugs in it, and never being alone. (how foolish of me, to think any of that actually matters). I don’t remember having a single good night of sleep the entire year. I was so tired all of the time. I wanted normalcy, but nothing about my life was normal. I was on a physical and spiritual journey to parts of the world no one gets to see. That’s far from normal.
It reminds me of when Jesus spent time on Earth. He spent 3 years leaving places. He abandoned everything to give glory to the Father. Abandonment is something we spent a lot of time talking about before, during, and after the race – and for good reason. As Christians, we’re called to abandon everything that means something to us. We’re called to give stuff up. If it hurts to leave, if it hurts to let go, you’re abandoning the right thing. There is no way for God to work in our lives when we fill it with so many things that, at the end of the day, don’t truly have a lot of meaning. He wants our entire hearts, and we must abandon everything to give Him a heart to work with.
I knew what I was giving up when I left home. I was fully aware I would no longer have my bed, shower, washer and dryer.. Everything that makes home, “home” (or the American version of it). I had no idea there were aspects of myself that God was going to ask me to abandon while on my kingdom journey. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. It was maturity that I had not yet reached.
He asked me to give up my pursuit of knowledge, which gave me confidence and allowed me to intellectualize every situation instead of feeling real emotions. When you step foot in a place that is not your own, you’re a child again. You know nothing, and you’re forced to rely on God for the most basic things. Everything I spent so much time learning in America no longer had meaning. I was humbled in a way that felt embarrassing most days. God taught me how to ask for help, and I realized that it wasn’t a weakness.
He asked me to give up all of my dreams and simply follow Him. That’s something I remember reading in scripture and hearing in church, but never thought it was something I’d actually do. I mean, who actually does that? I had this idea in my head that I needed to live the American Dream. If I work hard enough and long enough, maybe I’ll make something of myself. Maybe I’ll become someone great. God told me that I already was. There was nothing I could do that could make Him love me any more or any less.
He asked me to give up every comfort that distracted me from the hard things. You can’t instinctively grab your phone and get on social media or listen to music or call a friend when you’ve been living in rural villages around the world for 11 months. The only option you have is to sit with whatever is bringing you pain, whatever uncomfortable situation you might be in, and allow God to minister you through that. The downside of being a missionary is that most moments are like that. The world is a tough place to take on all by yourself. But through the difficult moments, I realized I don’t want to spend my entire life attempting to cope with my pain. That’s exhausting, and I’d rather be exhausted from dealing with problematic areas in my life than trying to distract myself from it. Distractions limit us from fully experiencing the trinity. It’s like a wall that separates us from the real thing, which is so close to our reach. Emotions are the very thing that makes us human, and I can’t ignore that, no matter what emotions I may be feeling at the time. Allowing myself to feel the full extent of the pain in this world creates intimacy with God.
The only way for me to abandon my self-consciousness, approval, and control was through the physical act of leaving. I couldn’t do any of these things at home. I needed to be stripped away from every piece of comfort here in America. I needed to get down to the basics and allow God to restructure me into someone new. I needed to be really, really uncomfortable.
When you learn to abandon, you’re also allowing yourself to become broken. That’s what abandonment leads us to. The world will break you when you’re alone with nothing to comfort you but God Himself. Traveling naturally has a way of stirring your heart. It creates conflict within yourself, and you’re most definitely going to have to deal with it. You see starving children, you pray over someone and they’re not healed, you experience pure exhaustion in all sense of the word, you face poverty and oppression, you become sick in the middle of a country you’ve never been to, you feel pure fear for the very first time, you see cruelty and injustice with your own eyes, you fight with your team and there’s no way to escape them, you encounter things about yourself that requires change.. that breaks you. When you’ve finally surrendered every little piece of home, all of your coping strategies, your only choice is to rely on God because He is literally all you have left.. and soon enough you realize He is all you need. He can do so much with a heart that is fully His. He’s been waiting on that, and it took leaving to get you there.
The race taught me to obey. I was a child again. I had no other choice but to fully and blindly trust my Father – and let’s be real – there’s not a lot of moments I had to do that in America. Everything I knew about life became useless when I was halfway around the world, walking foreign streets with nothing familiar in sight. It’s a terrifying experience. Everything was provided to me back home, and that’s not a bad thing. But it left me feeling as though I didn’t need God, because I already had everything I’ve ever wanted. But out in the world.. I had to believe that He would get me home. I had to believe that He would provide food. I had to believe that He would provide water. I had to believe He would provide me with money when I had none, and provide safety to my team every second of every day. There were moments on the race when I genuinely didn’t know if I would have any of that. Americans are targets outside of the states, your eyes must be open at all times. It’s scary. Trust took on an entirely different meaning and I was brought back down to a place in life where I had to trust and obey God for my basic needs. I was a child. I was growing younger through surrender.
The race was not a vacation. We were living in the midst of poverty. I remember being taken back at how easy it was to find God in the filth. I thought I would go into every country and bring Kingdom here on earth, but every time I left a place and went somewhere new, I realized that Kingdom was already there. I can’t tell you how many times someone who was poor ministered to me, when I had every intention of ministering to them. As American Christians, we have a tendency to place ourselves on a pedestal. We think it’s our job to find the poor and save them from it (and don’t forget to post a picture to make sure everyone knows you’re doing something good!). What actually happens, is that we walk into these places with pride for what we have and what we’re able to potentially accomplish – and we walk out with tears in our eyes because we just encountered God through a poor person. We are brought to our knees because we just met someone who has absolutely nothing, yet more faith and hope than most Americans who have never been in need. Why did I think I was so special? I was never meant to be anyones Savior.
Physical poverty brings us face to face with our own spiritual poverty. It places all of your flaws out on display and into the light. That’s what uncomfortable situations do to us. You’ll be surprised at the way you react when you find out you’re sleeping on the floor for the 4th month in a row.
When you lack physical comfort, you’re forced to rely on something other than yourself. You have a choice. Do I lean on the world, or do I turn towards the Father? It took time for me to admit that God was what my heart needed. I began to truly rely on Him for the first time in my life, and was hit with the shocking reality that I didn’t know who God was. I remember thinking to myself, “I have a lot of work to do.”
The Lord gently made me realize that I had Him all wrong. I placed Him in this box, and God is so much bigger than the boxes we put Him in. We want Him to be this safe God who answers our prayers and provides for our every need. A God who makes us happy the moment we commit our lives to Him, and brings us joy for all of our days. We want Him to do things our way. We create this image in our minds of how we think God is, and then get offended when He doesn’t live up to our expectations that we were so quick, and had no right to create.
When I was introduced to the reality of the world my only choice was to let go of that box. Why did I think I had the right to paint a picture of something I’ve never seen?
That started a new journey of discovering the Father’s heart, and ultimately, the whole point of the World Race. I was able to discover who God was without the outside influence of a church with an American agenda, or my friends and family who created a version of God all for themselves (and what I did before the race). I went out into the world and encountered God exactly the way He wanted me to. He began to show me His character and His heart by exposing me to the people He loved. My heart began to break for the people hurting, the people who were sick, the families living in filth and praying for their next meal, the kids without homes, the women stuck in human trafficking, the men who so badly want to live a life of purity but are surrounded by brokenness. My heart broke for it all, and for the first time in my life I felt intimate with God. I felt connected with Him because I was now feeling the same emotions as the Father and I realized I was in the process of being built back up.
I witnessed myself come alive through the relationships I was forming with others. I was made aware that the only time I have ever felt like I was truly in my calling, or had any sense of purpose, or any amount of meaning, were the moments I was fighting for someone – protecting someone. The world brought out this burning desire in my heart to fight for the oppressed and vulnerable. To seek justice. As humans, we are meant to be known on a deep, emotional level. That is the one thing that gives us life and it’s the only thing that matters. Suffering draws us closer to the Father’s heart and allows us to create real intimacy with other people who are in pain.
Pain is difficult for Christians to handle. The unanswered prayers, death, trauma.. has the God that we have been so earnestly seeking the one who allows this? He is in control of it all, right? That’s tough to think about. I saw so many horrible things around the world and I spent a lot of time expressing anger at God for it. How do I explain evil to someone who wants to learn about the love God has for His children? I may never feel at peace with any answer. But, eventually, I understood that God is not in need of defending. Your job as a Christian is not to defend God – He can most certainly handle that on His own. You simply need to rest in the uncertainty, in who He is, and who He has promised to be. That’s all faith is.
All of these sometimes small moments around the world led to my identity. I felt full for the first time in my life. It’s funny, the way you finally feel pure satisfaction when you leave behind everything and take almost nothing. I could have traveled to the most remote places in the world and left unchanged, but I pressed so much into the discomfort that it became something I craved.
I laid everything down, left home, and was now face to face with the Father and everything He desired to show me.
I think everyone needs to leave at some point. Traveling pulls stuff out of you, whether you want it to or not. It allows you to discover who you are and what you care about. Everything else that you genuinely thought were important parts of your life are now put on the back burner, and only the meaningful things are now in front of you. It changes you, as it should.
I would never want to repeat this journey. It was brutal and eye-opening and purifying – everything I hoped it would be. It was meant to happen only once, and it has been the most important thing I have accomplished. It definitely won’t be the last.
