I wrote a blog about all the funny things my squad and I experienced at World Race training camp, but I wanted to write about what reallllyyy happened.
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I was curled up in my tent night three of training camp. In between sobs I called my mom.
“I can’t do it. I think I’m going to quit,” I whispered. (Tent walls aren’t soundproof.)
As my mom often does for me, she asked me to talk it out. We both know I think myself crazy, where my thoughts get jumbled up like clothes in the dryer. We needed to take out, sift through, and neatly fold my anxieties.
The anxieties:
I’m not like anyone. Their faith doesn’t look like mine. They can all be certain of something they can’t see. I question; I waver. They’re secure, confident. There’s no way I can get to their level of faith in ten days. They’re all in. They’re spiritual where I’m tangible. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
The self-doubts:
Should I be going on this trip if I don’t seem to fit in? Do I have to be 100% confident in my faith to do the World Race? Who do I think I am trying to go on a mission trip in the midst of a season of questioning? Do I have to be good at evangelism, or even comfortable with it? Can I be a vessel for God when I struggle to comprehend Him?
Here’s the thing – in this last season of my life I have wrestled, I mean truly wrestled, with God. I’ve fought Him. I’ve yelled at Him. I’ve cried out to Him. I’ve been arms sprawled, face down before Him. I’ve ignored Him and walked away from Him. The World Race was the first thing I felt almost led to in a long time, and I jumped at the opportunity. Only to have my insecurities brought out with 30-something people I didn’t know.
Night three of training camp, in the middle of nowhere Georgia, in a tent that I’d bought four days prior to be my home for 11 months, I broke down. I couldn’t ignore my deep yearning and passion for God. But I also couldn’t ignore my near tangible fear that everyone else had something I didn’t.
On the phone with my mom, I got all my fears out in front of me. I felt scared and alone and vulnerable. Naked even, to go with the laundry metaphor. But she said the most gracious and perfect thing: she said she wasn’t scared of my doubts, my team wouldn’t be scared of my doubts, and God definitely isn’t scared of my doubts.
Because love, deep love, and the ability to share it, is never lacking in the seasons of drought.
Just LISTEN to the wise words of my mom:
“I love wrestling with God. It’s like adventures, and I like adventures. Loving others more than yourself, glorifying Him by treating others as if they were your family, that’s all He asks. To try to do that in a way that isn’t natural to you doesn’t make you a better believer. Maybe it actually makes you the opposite. Maybe that’s a kind of fitting in He doesn’t care about anyway.”
God is the ultimate adventure. And to experience Him we don’t have to have a faith like everyone else’s. We must simply be open to love.
We don’t have to be anyone but ourselves, because to do otherwise is denying God’s magical beauty and created order.
It’s amazing – we have the ability to question, to experience God in cognition and nature and people and wrestling and love and sadness and vulnerability. That’s the beauty of humanity. We experience one another and learn from each other, in both similarities and differences.
So maybe someday a future wannabe racer will read this. Maybe they want to do the World Race but they don’t think they’ll be good enough, or spiritual enough, or prepared enough.
My word to those:
Go. Step out of the boat. Yeah, Peter stepped out and failed miserably in front of his friends. But he was the disciple who got to experience walking on water.
If God opens the door, be faithful to walk through.
He only asks for us to be open-handed, palms upward to receive.
Oh, and if on night three you break down and need someone to sob with, call my mom.
🙂
