Fingers paging through a crumpled copy of Charisma, I keep going back to this article, again and again. Stuck in the back of my head like chewing gum caught in my hair, I can’t get The World Race out of my mind. Reading and re-reading the whole magazine, I keep coming back to the same page. I think this page might be magnetized, attracting the metal plate in my head. Staring at Shannon Meador’s September route, I can’t help but think, “Holy cow…Wow.”
Thirty odd times over, I read that article, clinging to it like a rollercoaster lap bar. Eight days later, talking to my mother, I mention it. “Justin, I just emailed you a link to that. Jenn Watson, from church – well, you don’t know her – she’s going in September too.” You know those cloudy days when God is just not clear? This was definitely not one of those moments. Like gawking at your toes through clear sapphire seas, this was oh so lucid.
Applying was scary. The online application looked like Mount Everest, and I wasn’t even in Nepal yet. They really want the full enchilada, eh? Drugs. Check. Stealing. Yup. Lying. No doubt. I secretly wondered if they’d really want, someone, ahem, like me, on their mission trip. They probably want the uber-Christians who aren’t bringing along baggage.
Sometime mid-morning, in the midst of re-painting the upper dorm, Aaron called to interview me. Like being burned alive, a bug below a magnifying glass during a backyard science experiment, everything, all my past flooded back to the present and there wasn’t anything left. The interview seemed to go well until the left hook, and there’s always a sucker punch. Expect it. After spilling my story, Aaron answered, “We really don’t accept anyone that hasn’t been out of any addictions program for at least a year. We’ll have to get back to you.”
When I get nervous, I have a nasty habit of ripping my fingernails. For ten days my fingernails took a serious toll, checking my phone at five minute intervals and scanning my junk email inbox for missed mail. Awful, awful, incredibly awful until finally, standing outside a De Cicco’s in Brewster, my phone rang.
“You’re accepted”
