There was a day on my race that I had the blog thing down; every few days a new blog appeared, and I felt satisfied that I was sharing my stories with the world on a regular basis.
And then it stopped. Out of no where, without warning, I couldn’t write anymore. I didn’t have the words to say, the pictures to post, or the desire to share the stories anymore.
The truth was this: I wanted to go home.
I didn’t want to be on the race anymore. That’s something I never dreamed I would experience on the race. I remember in month four, when one of my old teammates, who is now my squad leader, told me this: if you decide to go home, you have to promise to tell me. I didn’t think that the feelings of homesickness would ring so true in who I am. I’ve been independent for a long time, and I’ve never had a longing to go home.
I had never wanted to leave something before and I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about those feelings.
And these feelings are hard to come to terms with when you’re 9000 miles from home, just want some Chick-fil-, and that isn’t going to be your reality for 3+ months. That you still have 3 new hosts to meet, 3 new countries to visit, and a load of things to learn about yourself.
Thankfully, when all of that came to a head, that same old teammate of mine happened to be with our team for the month. The one who told me months ago that I had to tell him I wanted to quit, and honestly, the last person I wanted to see when I wanted to buy a plane ticket back to America.
But, instead of being met with a “don’t let the door hit you on the way out”, I was met with a “You’re letting the emotions of how you feel right now dictate a choice you are making that will affect you for a long time and I’m not going to let you do that.” It was met with love, truth, and hard things to hear, but something that pulled me out of the funk I was in to help me see that I needed to go to Jesus instead of going home. Mason kept me where I was supposed to be when I wanted to run from something that was hard. [[Thanks Mase!]]
And that’s the truth: the race has moments that are really hard.
In that moment, those were hard words to hear. Words that made me mad because I wanted to leave instead of stay. I didn’t want to have to fight for something that was hard, for the umpteenth time. I didn’t want to give more feedback; I didn’t want to share my life with 5 other people all of the time. I wanted to go walk around Target, by myself, without anyone else talking to me, while sipping on tea from Chick-fil-A. I didn’t want to have to share the fact that getting dengue fever is infact the worst I have ever felt in my life. And I sure didn’t want to go to Jesus because of it.
But thankfully, I learned to turn to Jesus, to turn to the place where I am SAFE. He can listen when you’re mad and understand who you are deep down and how that changes things. I learned to turn to the only one who can make me whole. And that’s changed everything for me over the last month and a half.
In just two more months, we’ll be home, but for now, we’re going to be living it up in the African life for a little while.
