I have been home for three months, wow, three months! Has it really been that long? Sometimes I feel like it was just yesterday that I hopped off the plane in Philly and stepped onto American soil for the first time in 9 months. But then there are days that I have to remind myself that this past year really did happen, it wasn't a dream, I didn't make up those memories, I didn't make up those adventures, those friends really do exist!!
Life back in the States has been a drastically different from life on The Race, or even life before The Race. While it seems like things would be at least a little bit like it was before, it isn't. My needs and desires are completely different now from what they used to be. Don't get me wrong, it has been totally awesome being home, knowing that I have almost everything I need within arms reach, having the ability to go to the store and know that there will be a pack of Oreos there I can pick up, even if they are $4.00! But that isn't what I want, I don't want to know that everything is right in front of me, I don't want to be able to rely on anything but Christ.
Right now I am working at Old Navy, and I know that when I tell people what I am doing and how old I am they look at me like I am a sad puppy or like I am a bum. Yeah, I am 23 years old, I graduated from college a year and a half ago, and I work at Old Navy with a bunch of teenagers, and I'm okay with that, for now. It's funny, usually when I tell people where I have been for the past year they look at me and say “Oh, wow, that's awesome. And this is such a good time for you to do that, when you're young and single and you have nothing tying you down.” When I hear that I want to say, no you don't get it, I didn't do it because it was the opportune time or because I wanted to travel (well, that was God's selling point for me). I did it because God told me to go. My trip was not so that I could get my travel bug out of my system, it was so that God could prepare me for what he has planned for me, so that he could reveal his plans for my life.
For a large majority of my life I have had this picture perfect idea of what my life is going to/supposed to look like… the American Dream. I thought I would get married, get a job, get a house, have 2.5 kids, and a dog, and a white picket fence. Even into the first three or so months of The Race this what I thought was going to happen when I got home, maybe I would even meet someone on The Race.
Sounds perfect right?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure God laughed about that for weeks with his angel friends.
Month by month He started to break down that dream. Piece by piece it started to fall, but as each piece fell God would pick it up and put it in a different way, until finally I had a new dream. A dream that wasn't worried about money, or about having the nice desk job that would actually drive me crazy, or about getting married or having kids. This dream is all about God, about what he has planned for my life, about following Christ to the ends of the earth and back, about sharing with the lost and broken how in the eyes of Christ they are perfect, and how he wants to have a relationship with the ones he loves so dearly.
My new dream is to go where ever God tells me to go, to trust that I am always in his hand, he is always guiding me, and that he always provides for me. I don't need the nice job that pays really well because I have Jesus who paid it all and provides everything I could ever need, all just because he loves me.
My dream is to follow God in my calling to missions.
Wow, I never thought I would say that.
So what does all of this mean? Well, it means I'm not following the conventional American standard of living. I am not looking for a full time job, I am not looking for a house,
I am looking for where God is pointing. And right now, God is pointing me to Georgia. Yep, I'm leaving again (oh, sorry not the country Georgia, the state) I am headed to Gainesville, GA in January for a year. AIM has started a school down there called CGA or the Center for Global Action, it is designed for people who have come off The Race and have felt God calling them to something, but don't really know what it is yet. It will help me discover this calling, and sharpen the skills God has given me for that calling, and I will be an intern at AIM.
While this is an update on what Christ is calling me to, it is also a request for funds. CGA is $300 a month, a total of $3,600 for the year, it may not be as much as The Race was, but it is still a lot for a missionary working at Old Navy. God has done a lot in my life through The Race and continues to work in my life through the stories I have to tell (still working on those blogs by the way), and I know that He has a lot more still to do using CGA.
Thank you all for your support, prayers, and your love. More blogs from The Race are to come soon, they are harder to write than I thought, and I hope God will use them to work in your life like they did mine.
If you would like to donate for CGA you can donate through my blog, just click on the link!
Thank you again family.
