Recently, I have noticed that a lot of the conversations I have been having with people I haven’t talked to [in depth] in the last two months have all gone pretty much the same way. The conversation usually starts with “So what classes are you taking this semester?”, which then leads to me saying “well actually…” and then proceeding to tell the whole story of how God called me to participate in the World Race: Gap Year. Now, I love these conversations. I am always thrilled to share with a new person what God is doing in my life. However, I have noticed that many of these conversations tend to end with the same question.
“So what are your plans after the mission trip?”
To this I usually respond with a awkward laugh, which is the only way I know to show the emotions I feel when asked that question. My response is usually the same, that I have no idea what my plans will be because I fully believe God is sending me on this mission trip so that He can reveal to me what His plan is for my next step in life. I am totally fine with that answer. In fact, I am extremely excited about that answer! But I did have a sort of realization this week about my life post-race.
I still have absolutely no clue what I will be doing a year and a half from now, but I am not worried about that. God could call me back to school, He could call me to join the military, or become a police officer, He could call me to be a teacher, or to go back out to the mission field, He could introduce me to the man I am meant to spend my life with, or He could tell me I am meant to be single (that one was hard to type). There is an endless list of things God could call me to do, and honestly I would be okay with every single one of them. It has been engraved into my brain for the past six years not to ask what I want to do with my life, but to ask God what He wants me to do with my life. That is exactly what I am asking Him now, with the knowledge and the hope that His will be revealed while I’m out in the field.
While I don’t currently have any expectations about my career and life goals post-race, I do have expectations for the way I will look at the world post-race. This is a conversation I frequently have with my friends and family. I expect to get back from the race and see the world, America in particular, in a new light. I expect to get back and be dismayed by the selfishness of our society and the things we take for granted. I am already starting to notice these things now. The way everyone I know, myself included, gets angry when the WiFi takes too long to load, or the water is from the tap and not a spring, or I hear people complain because the lettuce at the restaurant is Romaine not Iceberg. Before God called me to this mission, I did not notice or care about these things. Now, I feel myself get impatient or I hear someone complain about a luxury not working properly or tasting right, and I think, how dare we? How dare we act like this and think like this when there are people across the world dying to even drink one drop of dirty rain water? Even as a Christian I never thought of these things as luxuries, because I grew up in America where we live in luxury compared to the rest of the world and many of us don’t even realize it.
So, while I don’t have any specific goals regarding my career or my life after the Race, I do have a goal regarding my mindset, and the way I will view the world. I hope I even experience a little reverse culture-shock because my view of the world changes enough for me to feel unfamiliar in a “familiar” place. Typing it out, it sounds like an odd goal. But it is, I think, a good one.
