Okay.. so, I'm just going to lay this out there. I hate blogging. It's not that I don't want to share my heart with the world, it's just that I've never really been good with words. I struggle to tell the waiter at Olive Garden what I want to eat, for heaven's sake! So, when I found out that I would have to keep a blog for this journey, everything inside of me groaned.
"I haven't written a paper since high school! I don't know how to write out what I'm thinking! I will never be able to do justice to the things that I'm going to experience!" All these thoughts went through my head. And then I thought about when I first found the world race. I read the blogs, not because they were written by bestselling authors, or because they flowed perfectly, or even because they made sense. I read them because they were raw. They were real. They were sincere. I was drawn to the people who wrote them because they were authentic and honest with their struggles.
So here I am, being honest and raw and real.
I'm terrified to go on the race. The thought that I will be spending 11 months with 40 other people I have never met makes me want to wet my pants. But, at the same time, I'm also so excited and so ready to go! I know that there are going to be times when all I want is to be at home in my own bed with no one else around, but I also know that there are going to be times when I will never want to come home.
I expect my perspective to be changed. I expect God to show up. I expect that living in community for a year will be one of the hardest things I will do, but I also expect that it will be one of the most rewarding things I will do. I expect to get annoyed. I expect to make some of the best friends I will ever have. I expect to miss home. I expect to cry a lot. I expect to be challenged and stretched and I expect to grow. I expect to get sick. I expect to be hungry. I expect to not want to blog at all. I expect to see poverty that breaks my heart, but I also expect to see compassion that restores my heart. I expect that God will provide for every need, no matter the size or seeming insignificance. And when it's all said and done, I expect that I will have lost my expectations. I will serve others freely. I will have learned to love fully. And I will have begun to live unselfishly.
And maybe, just maybe, I will have learned to like blogging.
