Hi friends! It’s been a while!
First – I want to thank everyone again for your support over the past few months. It truly means more than you know – your prayers and well-wishes are so kind and so very much appreciated. I’m truly blessed to be surrounded by such amazing & supportive brothers and sisters in Christ as I process through this season.
Secondly – I’m very happy to let you all know that I have decided (through lots of prayers, contemplation, conversations with friends, family & my World Race advisor) to take the next step in my WR journey. This summer, I’ll be going on a World Race: Semesters trip to Costa Rica for the month of June.
The story behind this decision is real & raw and I have agonized over what parts to tell and what parts to keep private. Ultimately though, I feel as though the Lord is calling me to be truthful, honest and authentic. And, if it so happens that future World Racers go through a similar experience as I did, I hope that my being honest about my journey can be a comfort to them and perhaps give them peace about their own journey.
As Julie Andrews so wonderfully said in “The Sound of Music”, “Let´s start at the very beginning, A very good place to start”. As many of you know back in August I was accepted to go on the World Race: Semesters for three months. I’d be serving with a team of other young adults from across the US in three separate countries: Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. From August 2018 – to January 2019 I fundraised the $6400 to cover the cost of the trip and started connecting with my teammates. As exciting as it was preparing for the World Race, it was also a very stressful time for me emotionally. In the summer of 2017, my maternal grandfather passed away, and just over a year later, in the summer of 2018, my paternal grandfather passed away. Both of those deaths very hard to go through and it was very difficult to process through my grief. Because of my grief, and along with some other emotional stresses I was experiencing during that time, one of my requirements for the World Race was to go see a counselor and get her approval for me to go on the World Race.
In October 2018 I began counseling. And let me tell you – they helped SO MUCH! Talking through my grief, my life, my feelings with someone else was so helpful. Through these sessions, I was able to really work through issues & feelings that I had stuffed down so deep I didn’t even know were there. One of those things was my anxiety. After a few sessions, my counselor told me that I showed many of the symptoms for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and I don’t think I can even begin to describe how absolutely amazing, really, LIBERATING it was. Normally you might think that the words “anxiety” + “liberating” would never go together. But, being able to put a name to my feelings, to why decision-making was so difficult, to why it was so hard for me to really make friends & lasting relationships, to why I dreaded social outings, and honestly, a billion other things was so liberating! Having a name for all this was amazing. Not to use it as an excuse, but as something that could help me understand the “why’s”. Why I felt that way. Why I reacted the way I did. Why almost everything.
*Side note about counseling – I don’t know what your life is like. I don’t know what you are currently walking through. But I do know that talking things out with somebody HELPS. Even if you’re unsure, or scared, I want to encourage you to try it. Just one session. Maybe you’ll love it and it’ll help. Maybe it won’t but it’s always worth a shot. I also know that there is a somewhat negative stigma about seeing a counselor, really about mental health in general, but I promise you: you are worth it. Your mental health is worth it. Do not feel ashamed about going. You don’t know how much it can help you until you try. 🙂
Fast forward to training camp. Most of you know the story behind leaving the World Race at Training Camp. If not, you can read about it here .
Anyways, as soon as I got picked up from training camp I felt a huge peace. I felt comforted. I felt like I could breathe again. Like I could breathe deeply. I felt lighter as if my stresses, anxieties, and fears were lifted away. Almost like they all disappeared into a bubble and slowly floated upwards towards heaven. Jesus reached out his hands and took my bubble and said “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay. Trust.”
It was easy to slip into a routine. And I think that’s a testament to how much I needed to come home. I was completely confident in my decision (and I still am). I had no doubts. But just as I knew that coming home was the right step, I also didn’t know what the following steps would look like. I had no idea when the opportunity for another possible Semesters trip would come up, much less if I’d be called to go on it. I started going back to counseling again, not only to process through coming home but also to prepare me for the possibility of another World Race trip. I had no idea what my life was going to look like. But for the first time, in probably my whole life, I was okay with that.
The Lord works in mysterious ways y’all. And He also works in really powerful ways too. In this past few months, since I’ve been home, there were three major things that have helped me realize the “why” behind coming home. I know now that there was an incredible, much-needed purpose behind my coming home on January 26th.
1.) I was scrolling through Pinterest (as I do quite frequently) and I saw this quote. It was 11:30 in the morning on some random weekday. And I started bawling. I mean really deep ugly crying. And if you know me, you know that I DON’T cry. Like ever. So I definitely knew that this was a sign from the Lord. Here’s the quote:
“God wrecks your plans when He sees your plans are about to wreck you.”
(Full disclosure – I teared up a bit while writing this part.) Wow. That broke me. In a good way. Part of what we discussed when I was trying to decide whether to come home or not was the concern that if I did go to Africa, that I would just be “going through the motions”. That I would be surviving, and not thriving. I’m not saying that if I had gone to Africa, I would’ve just sat around and had a horrible time. I know that God would have done great things, and taught me great things. But I also know that I wouldn’t have been able to fully live out the gospel. To really be the hands and feet of Jesus. I needed to come home. To have my plans be “wrecked” as the quote says. Keyword there: “my”. My plans got wrecked. My idea of what the next 3 months looked like went down the drain. But God’s plan didn’t. He had the BEST plan in mind for me – and it involved wrecking my own personal plan.
2.) A few weeks after being home, my best friend invited me to a women’s ministry event at her church. I initially said yes and then the day came and I really didn’t want to go. But as I’ve been reminded quite frequently over the past few weeks, sometimes when we really, REALLY don’t want to do things, it means we really, REALLY need to do them. So I went. Boy am I glad that I did! The night was about learning tips & tricks to memorize scripture. The only bible verse I’ve ever memorized was John 3:16 and that’s it. I wasn’t really interested but I listened and participated really only out of respect for the speaker and for my best friend. But halfway through the event, the speaker began to recite scripture, specifically an ENTIRE chapter in Psalms. Psalm 139. Every last word. As I listened I felt a comforting presence, like Jesus had his hand on my shoulder, softly telling me “listen to what I have declared over you”.
Click here if you want to read Psalm 139 all the through.
Psalm 139 was a life-changing piece of scripture that I needed to hear. As I listened to every word it almost felt like there was no one else in the room but me and the speaker. It truly was amazing. Every single word calms down all my fears, worries and anxieties. Every time I’ve read it since then, I’ve felt a sense of true, real peace that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before, and that is a true gift from the Lord.
3.) About a week after I came home, Woodstock City Church’s college ministry, The Living Room started back up for the spring semester. I decided to go a bit reluctantly, really just for the sake of attempting to start a weekly routine again. I had been going to TLR for exactly a year before and it felt normal & comforting to me. I went expecting to have fun and get to hang out with friends. But I did not expect to be completely and totally wrecked. They were starting a 3-week series titled “IDK: Understanding God’s Will for Your Life”. Wow. The title alone was not a coincidence. God knew I needed to hear those three sermons. Over the course of the three weeks we talked about what is God’s will, how do we know what it is, and what exactly is God’s will for our lives. What is God’s will in regard to who we marry, where we live, what job we have? All good things. I learned a lot. At this point, I was still uncertain about what my plan was. I wanted to make sure that whatever I ended up doing was the right choice and made sense for me and my life. And at the end of Week One, Samer (TLR’s pastor) said this:
“What if we stopped worrying about our future and instead trusted the God who holds it?”
Once again, I was wrecked. Man oh man, that one little sentence made it clear to me. Yes, I had followed God’s plan and left the World Race. That was the right decision. Yes, I had left my own plan behind to follow the Lord’s. Yet still, I worried. I feared. I struggled with what my future looked like because I wasn’t trusting the God who holds it. I was trusting God just enough. I was giving Him the bare minimum of my confidence. I was still relying on me and also relying on God, instead of fully relying on Him to take care of me and my life.
I truly 100% believe, that if for nothing else, the Lord called me back to home to read that quote on Pinterest on a random weekday, attend that women’s ministry event that I didn’t really want to go to and be there in the room to hear that one sentence on a Wednesday night.
After those three moments, I began to feel like the Lord was calling me back to the World Race. I was really confused because surely the Lord wouldn’t have called me away from something so big and so life-changing, that He would end up calling me right back to it only a few months later?!?! Nope. Jesus needed to bring me home to share with me some simple truths. He needed to use such a big, grand event like bringing me home, within 48 hours of leaving the country, to show me that I can trust Him. I need to trust Him. That by trusting Him, fully, 110%, I will thrive, not just survive.
So that leads us to today – April 2019. I am fully committed to my trip. I know that while this decision may seem sudden to most of my support team, it’s not sudden to me. I made the decision to commit to the Costa Rica Semesters trip in early March. I’ve been working hard to prepare myself emotionally & mentally for this trip, learning better ways to manage my anxiety, and I’ve been going to regular counseling sessions. I know that the month spent in Costa Rica will be one where I’m not just “going through the motions”. It will be an incredible experience. As if I haven’t already experienced tons of crazy-cool God moments in the past few months, the money I have left from my Africa trip is the exact amount I need for Costa Rica. Fully funded. Go God amiright?
I really do want to say thank you. Thank you for praying. Thank you for your support. Thank you for reading through these crazy long, very detailed blog posts. It really does mean the world. 🙂
-Katie
