I’ve sat on my parent’s front deck every night for the last week just staring out over tree tops, up at the stars, or at the moon slowly becoming rounder with each passing night. I sit and just feel the flood of memories and emotions from the last year. Staring at the same (just much brighter) sky in Mozambique while sharing some wine with Pam. Climbing a hill in South Africa with Seth, Kari, and Mike Black and screaming the name of Jesus at the top of our lungs to the other people that didn’t make it past the first hill, way down in the valley below us. Riding in boats through the grey watered channels of Bangkok trying out best to not get any of that water on us. Walking into Buddhist temples and praying non-stop to the one true God, bringing His truth and presence to the strongholds of the enemy. Facing a demon possessed woman on a ship in the Philippines. Aaron and Danny peeing off the Great Wall. S’mores on the beach for Christmas Eve, and the moto ride Christie got me for Christmas. The girls on my team singing to Dashboard Confessional at the top of their lungs about making out with someone while we were in the middle of a men’s purity talk just outside with the orphanage boys in Cambodia (we were glad they couldn’t understand). The empty hole in my heart where the 2 months I spent away from the race should be. Every prophecy spoken over me, each nudging God gave me to move a little closer to who He made me to be. Getting ‘lost’ on the way to the bathroom in the hospital and ‘accidentally’ finding Christie’s room when we already had the limit on visitors in there. Listening to a Nigerian pour his heart into worshipping God on the other side of a set of prison bars from me in Thailand. Crying through prayers over a destitute pastor in the Philippines. Bungee jumping, shark cage diving, all night Settlers of Catan, poker church, wine tours, Angkor Wat, water parks, getting spat out on my head by the Indian Ocean, dancing the macarena (on 2 continents), and snorkelling through colors I’ve never seen in nature. How did all this and so, so, SO much more happen in my life, let alone in a single year?
A year. We flew for Thailand a year ago Monday. All those thousands of memories happened between then and now, but here I am at my parent’s house as some part of me is just existing, not letting all these things impact the here and now. Like I never left. Meanwhile, the rest of me is screaming in silence at being stuck waiting for things to come together for Colorado, missing my world race family, and frustrated with having no day to day impact on things around me because I’m still waiting on a bike engine so I can be mobile and get out of farm land (as much as I’m sure the cows love worshipping Jesus, it’s not quite the same). So each night I stop for a bit, and the side trying desperately to not feel these things gives way for a couple of hours and I just remember. And I keep coming back to the question, ‘How do I live this way here?’Pam gave me a card when we got to training in September, one she said she saw and thought of me. The card still rides shotgun in my backpack, as a reminder to how I have long wished to live my life. It just has one simple quote on it, one that happens to be my all time favourite:
‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ – Mahatma Gandhi
Right now I feel like I’m drowning under the flood of memories and feelings of detachment and longing for what was. It’s crossed my mind to stop trying for the change I want, the change I saw possible this year, because mundane apathy requires a lot less energy and all those feelings can just be memories and nothing more. But screw that. Pam saw it in me, amongst a whole lot of other people on and off the race, not to mention God’s faith in me, so I’m going to keep on trying to bring the light of the kingdom into the mess that life is instead. I don’t know how to do it yet, but I need to be the change I saw possible this year. It’s good to know there’s a place to gather where others are seeking the same thing: http://garyblack.myadventures.org/?filename=g42-church-colorado-springs
