Fundraising is like a giant project that I hate, but have to do in order to pass a class that I love.
I hated school. I hated homework and deadlines. But I LOVE learning. And even though it put me through hell, if I could go back five years I wouldn’t not go to college.
One of my favorite classes I ever took had a huge final project that I didn’t want to do. More like, I wanted to do it because I knew I’d learn a lot from it, but I had no idea how to go about it and it was big and scary and worth 35% of my final grade and I just wished it would go away. I wished I could get the learning without doing the assignment.
I got it done in the last three days of that semester. Which made it more stressful than it had to be. But at least it got done.
So it is with the World Race.
I can’t go if I don’t raise the money.
And I know that the whole fundraising process is a big part of growing, and if someone just wrote me a check for $16,000 I wouldn’t learn anything.
But I still wish I didn’t have to do it.
Right now it’s crunch time. It feels like the last few days of the semester when I’ve barely started on that final project and I have to finish it now or never: I dream about it at night, I’m on the edge of a nervous breakdown all throughout my day because I never stop thinking about it, people are yelling at me all the time because I’m not focused on anything else, and I have other things to get done but none of them seem important because of this one big thing.
Since September 2nd, the day I got accepted to this mess, I’ve told anyone who asked how I was going to come up with the money, “God will give it to me. I don’t know how yet, but he will.” And I was never scared or stressed about it for a minute until now.
It’s nine months later, and I’m finally freaking out. I don’t know if that means I never actually believed my own words, or if it means I’ve stopped believing it now. Or if it’s just the devil trying to get me to give up. That’s probably it.
Last night in my dreams I was walking through a big, scary city and seeing the number $3495 all over the place. There was no plot(most of my dreams play out like stories, so this was annoyingly abnormal); just me walking around, looking for something and finding nothing but that awful number of dollars that I still need.
I’m so sick of worrying. I don’t even care when I get the money; I just want to be able to sleep again.
So I woke up from that horrible nightmare and I said to God, “You don’t even have to give me the money right this minute. Just give me faith.”
I know I still need money too, but I’ve asked him for that enough times. I never asked him for faith in this because I thought I had enough of it.
Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted something from your mom, and you tried asking nicely and reasoning with her, but finally you just lost it and threw yourself on the floor kicking and screaming? You carry on for awhile and feel like you’re making your point, but finally you just get really tired and start to feel stupid because you aren’t getting results and you’re realizing that Mom is trying her best not to laugh at you…but you don’t want to give up too fast, so you just lie there on the floor until you get bored with it all.
This blog was me throwing a tantrum at God, and now I’m at the end of it, tired and wishing I hadn’t bothered.
I guess I’m sort of hoping it’ll prompt him to prove me wrong and send me something big tomorrow.
To those who have already donated: I hope all this doesn’t make me sound ungrateful. I promise I’ve happily screamed to my mom about each one of you. Thank you so much for getting me where I am; I’d rather be $3495 away from my deadline than $7500 away. 🙂
