Month 16. That’s how my brain has learned to categorize moments and lessons and seasons. That’s where I am now; I’ve been home from the World Race for nearly 5 months. Yes, I can believe it. It’s not the being home that feels like it’s gone quickly—this feels fine, I guess. It’s the race having started so long ago that feels like some sort of mistake.
Toward the end of my race, I was beyond ready to get home. I missed my people and my dog and my bed. I longed for a sense of permanence—a bedside table, a candle, a clean pair of underwear… It all sounded so nice. And it is! It totally is. On paper, I’ve been doing remarkably well since returning to American soil. I’ve read my bible, gone to church, joined a small group or 5, gotten a good job, and resisted old temptation. People ask how it is being home and I begin to sweat as I give an awkward cookie-cutter (but truthful) answer about how blessed I am because even I don’t want to hear the realer, rawer answer which is this:
I am lost, confused, discontent, and wandering. I’m angry and I just want to go back.
About a year and a half of preparation went into that July day I flew out of Atlanta. In that time, I read blogs and listened to loved ones all telling me the same thing: “you’re going to have to give up a lot this year. You’re going to lose a lot this year. The sacrifice is going to be big this year.” I felt prepared for those things: leaving behind my family, friends, schooling, comforts, safety, and control. I knew what I was getting myself into as much as any new missionary can. But what they don’t tell you, what you can’t be prepared for, is that one day you’re going to have to give up the race too.
These past four months have been a gradual shift from “oh my gosh I can go to Target whenever I want and my mom sleeps 20 feet away from me!” to “a year ago I was trekking in the Himalayas, telling people about Jesus for the first time, and now I’m staring at a computer screen for 8 hours.” How do I validate that within myself? How do I convince myself that I’m still living abundantly when I’ve seen and done the things I have? There’s been an ever-growing fear creeping up inside me that tells me that the World Race is the best thing I’ll ever do. That I peaked last year and that the rest of my life will be spent in a culture-pleasing box with no holes for air. I’ve been so desperate for something that I’m grasping at anything.
The last time I wrote publicly, I was confident in a calling God had placed in my heart. Shortly after posting that blog, excited and on fire for Jesus and everything He would be doing in me and through me in the next season, I chose to say “no thanks” to Jesus and take my own path. I allowed inconvenience and fear take the reins of my heart and future rather than the One who created the reins. I’ve been sucked into this secular world of fitting molds rather than breaking chains and choosing the safe option rather than the right one. During one of my now biweekly breakdowns, in the midst of trying to find a church that felt like home, I gushed my heart to a good friend. I told her how I felt belligerent and disobedient like Jonah and that this year that I said no to God was going to be lost—that I was going to be punished for my rebellion and my fear. I braced for her to tell me that I was right and that I’d have to get used to my unhappiness. But instead, she took my hand and reminded me that God doesn’t waste our time or our lives; God doesn’t waste anything.
So I decided to make this year count. I have a few friends near me, and a lot far away, but I don’t have community anymore. I’m jealous of myself in last year, surrounded by people who love me and know my heart and follow me into the bathroom to talk. I don’t know what I want to do with my life anymore or even what the next step is. I desperately wanted my own apartment, but God had me wait. It seems like everything I longed for on the race isn’t going to come as easily or as willingly as I’d fantasized about for so long.
My birthday’s coming up in a few short weeks and that’s somehow more difficult than anything else. That day last year was one of the best of my life—a day in a month that drastically changed me. I was in my favorite city—a city that now both feels like home and like a place I couldn’t ever have actually been—Kathmandu, Nepal. We rode crammed busses like only Asia has, ate traditional Nepali food, followed the sound of live music in the streets to hole-in-the-wall bars, prayed over elderly women at a homeless shelter… it feels surreal. Do you know what I mean? I have to look at pictures to prove to myself that it was real. All of it. The countries, the people, the experiences. It feels so far removed and yet it feels so close.
The pain of losing the race is perhaps the most profound pain I’ve ever known. To know that wherever God takes me in the world and in my life will never be quite like those 11 wild months. My multitude of journals and letters from the race sit on a shelf in my room. I treat that spot like it’s on fire and I’ll get burned if I get too close. So they sit, unopened and filled with the fullness of my heart. I regularly get messages and texts from my friends in Thailand, Guatemala, and South Africa and every time my phone lights up with an “I miss you,” I feel ready to buy the next plane ticket out. Hell, I’ve spent countless nights these last few months looking up cheap flights to anywhere. I’ve deleted my social media accounts for weeks at a time because it’s too painful to watch new squads launch and to see the incredible things my squadmates and friends are doing now while I sit, pulling my hair out, wondering what my purpose in life could possibly be.
How can God be so good, so faithful, so abundant in His blessings as to bring me around the world to change my life and then drop me off in Pewaukee, Wisconsin and forget all about me?
He can’t.
Of course He can’t. He has more for me, I know that. But believing that in my heart, that there is more after the race? That’s a whole different story. My discontent has been my downfall lately. I’ve found complaining to be the best way to cope with my unhappiness, rather than digging down to see what the source is. When I’m asked what I’m so unhappy with, I get flustered trying to respond because truth be told I have no idea. What is it that the Father’s trying to teach me now? I know that the World Race was a gateway—not a stopping point. Just like I know that this particular season is a gateway to whatever He has next. And so I have to somehow learn to grieve the race rather than pushing the memories down. I have to learn to be content even though my circumstances aren’t what I thought I wanted. And I have to learn to look ahead with trust, not a plan.
I think when God shuts doors on us, we experience a sort of righteous frustration. I do, anyway. I want community and I’ve been putting myself out there to find one, but it’s falling through time and time and time again. Rather than asking God what He has for me now, I assume that I know better and so I continue trying to force something that maybe isn’t meant to be. Maybe the reason I can’t find a community here is because I’m not meant to plant myself here. Maybe it’s because He’s got some things he wants to work out with me one-on-one first. Or maybe I just have to try harder. Maybe the reason I feel lost and purposeless is because I haven’t stumbled upon my actual purpose yet…or maybe it’s because He needs me to serve other purposes first. I don’t know—I can’t know. And I need to become okay with that.
But I do know that I have a choice. I can choose to forget all of the wondrous and loving things my Father did for me this last year—redemption and provision and direction and grace and splendor—or I can choose to remember the times that I felt like this—lost and forgotten, confused and directionless—and I can look ahead to what happened next. To how he blessed me, to how he spoke to me, to how he provided for me. To how things worked out. And I can choose to believe that this unchanging, unwavering and boundless God will move again.
The race may be over, but it is not done shaping me. I don’t know what’s next, but I know it will be good because I do not serve a God who brings his daughter to the ends of the earth only to tease her and bring her back to where she was to live out a shallow and average life. He has called us to abundance, guys! Abundance. That doesn’t have to mean plane rides and remote villages, it just means Him. He’s with us. He’s with me. Whether I’m swimming with sharks off the coast of Africa or walking my dog in a suburb of Milwaukee… He’s here. He’s got something to teach me in this. Post-race life isn’t pretty. It’s a lot of choices that feel really hard—whether that’s what kind of coffee to get (not that I had a breakdown at Starbucks and had to leave or anything…) or what church to join or what direction to take, it’s really, really hard.
Sacrifice doesn’t always have to mean comfort and familiarity. Sometimes, we sacrifice the uncomfortable, the unusual, the things we never thought we’d miss. We pick up things along the way—for me it’s been jealousy, discontent, anger, frustration, and a lot of unnecessary clothes. But the ultimate sacrifice has already been made. The ransom has been paid. When we choose to follow Jesus, we choose to sacrifice knowing. We sacrifice our plans and our time and the lives we lived before him. Choosing to follow Jesus has meant saying goodbye to a lot of things—people, places, plans… but it’s meant gaining more than I could have possibly imagined. As I’ve lost the world, I’ve gained the Kingdom.
And isn’t that a sacrifice worth making?
