Welcome to my blog! Is that how you start a blog? I honestly do not know so I guess I’ll start by telling you why I have a blog in the first place. At this point it is no secret that I plan on leaving the country in August to go on an 11-month mission trip to 11 countries. When they told me I was accepted they also told me they wanted me to start blogging. So why am I just now sitting down to do it? Well that’s simple, it scares the heck out of me.
I was never the best student and spelling was one thing I was never confident in. I write how I talk and that is just every grammar Nazis worst nightmare. To me writing a blog feels as if I was to print out my homework for the entire internet to grade. I do not use fancy words and my grammar is all sorts of jacked and I would love to say that just writing is the worst part of them asking me to do this but it’s not. The worst part is its about me and that scares me because what if people find out the truth. Its easy to pretend like you have it all together when using 240 words or less but when they want you to actually write and share about your experiences it becomes way harder. This dream is not something I can just do. I cannot pull the money out of the bank because it’s not there and I really can’t expect to make that kind of money in these next couple of months. So my biggest fears with the race are not of physical safety or how I’ll communicate with those back home, I don’t hate the thought of living in a tent or cutting my wardrobe down to what can fit into a backpack, I don’t mind the fact that I will be going to strange places with a group of strangers talking to people who speak a different language than me. I can handle that stuff and most of it I could handle with a smile. However, the thought of people reading what I wrote or asking them for money, that’s where the fear comes in. My biggest fear is that I won’t be enough, that God has this amazing plan for my life and I end up failing Him. The idea that I won’t even get the chance to go, that I could fail God before I even have the chance to get on a plane. I start thinking that people are going to read this and see my flaws and find out that I am not good enough to go and in turn decide not to help me. I have this idea that if God is perfect and He loves me and I make it known that I love Him than I have to be perfect. Like if people find out that I fail or do something wrong than they are going to put that on God as if he failed. Thats what scares me the most is that people are going to think less of God because I messed up.
I often feel like a fraud, like I am tricking people into thinking I am good enough and if I actually let them into my life they will learn the truth and they’ll see I have no clue what I am doing. I don’t know how I’ll have the money to go on this trip. I don’t know what I am going to do when I get back and I for sure don’t have a 5 year plan or even know how I am going to get to Georgia for the launch. It feels like I’m just winging it. That I am sneaking past the security every single time God tells me what he wants to do next. Honestly sometimes it feels like I’m tricking God, like I don’t know why he picked me to do this or why the people decided I should be accepted but we are just going to roll with it. Now please do not get me wrong I know I am not tricking God I just get so amazed at the life he picked for me I don’t feel worthy. I feel like there must of been some mistake with the paperwork upstairs because there is no way a small town girl like me who has no notable talents should be picked. But I think that is what is so amazing about God. He doesn’t need extraordinary people to do extraordinary things.
I think it was the beginning of March when I decided I wanted to be more vulnerable, to let more people see the real me, to be open and honest not just with others but with myself. I realized that the fear I had is that people wouldn’t like me or even worse, if I showed people this side of me they would find out I am not good enough to be a Christian. Well its May now and this is the first real step I’ve taken in doing that. I read something the other day that said “The longer we keep our fears a secret the more power they have over us” or something like that. So here I am sitting on my couch at 4:30 in the morning with a cup of coffee that keeps going cold before I can drink it, with my hair in a messy bun (not a cute one a real messy bun), wearing pjs I got of the clearance rack because I could not afford them at full price and glasses that no one knows I need because apparently this is when I decided I’m going to be brave so here it goes…
I fail a lot, I get mad at stupid stuff, I have held grudges when I should have forgiven people, I have chosen to be selfish when I had the chance to share, I have crossed boundaries that I swore I wouldn’t cross, I have lied, stolen and cheated. I have put myself in situations that I knew weren’t good for me, I gossiped to purposefully hurt others. I have told people not to do something then turned around and did it myself. I got caught up in how I look and made that my entire identity. I’ve lost sight of God and I’ve been scared to read my Bible or pray thinking He loved me less because of this stuff. I am most defiantly not good enough to be a Christian, I fail so much and do things I promised myself I wouldn’t do. But being a Christian isn’t about me being enough, it’s about God being more than enough. I am not saying Gods love makes it okay to sin, I am saying that God loves me even when I fail. Because of that, I don’t have to keep reliving the mistakes I’ve made in the past. Something about a new creation right?
DISCLAIMER: I do not plan for all my blogs to be like this one. I just felt like I needed to stop letting these lies get to me and the best way to do that would be to just let everyone know that I’m feeling. Also just a side note, I am not in constant fear that I am not enough I would actually say more often than not I truly believe that Gods purpose for me will be fulfilled, its just when I do feel like this I feel it hard. Anyways I will start blogging more and this is where you will get to see updates on my trip while I’m getting closer to leaving and updated on what we are doing while I am gone. If you have gotten this far I also want to say thank you. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this and most importantly thank you for you support as a take on this next adventure.
