If I’m being honest, I’m not always completely honest.
If I’m being honest, this whole thing is all at once more difficult and more beautiful than I could ever express.
If I’m being honest, the pictures and the carefully crafted captions I post are but a fraction of the reality of this race.
Even the “realest” of blogs are often expertly edited to make the incomplete seem complete, the unraveling to appear bound, the wildly undone to appear packaged nicely with a bow all around it.
I am not fearless enough to give the people what they don’t want – the fierce mess and wonder of it all.
I do not possess the candor to share the grit and the grime that gives this journey its beautiful texture – the moments of wanting to give in because of the impossibility of the task before me, the unforeseen complications of being tasked with moving 42 humans across borders in foreign countries, the broken people and the broken situations encountered and the even heavier truth that is the inability to truly fix any of it; the young ones whose hearts have no idea their worth; the bitter hearts turned hard from years of oppression and wrong-doing; the sickness, the heckling, the unwanted attention.
I have not the audacity to share the tears that sprinkle and water this journey, adding to it both growth and shine – the ones released in the resort I wasn’t supposed to be in (but they had the only good wifi for miles) when the reality of the difficulty of missing ones so deeply loved set in in full force; the ones that squeaked out in response to the beauty the Balkans’ highest peak; the ones dumped out uncontrollably as feelings and fear of inadequacy took over and the ones similarly emptied in response to the sweetest and most undeserved affirmations; or the ones silently given when the sixth migraine of the fortnight keeps you home from ministry one more time.
I am not selfless enough to share the dazzling beauty I’ve had the privilege of witnessing – each unreasonably beautiful testimony of the “how does God see you” activity done with the orphans in Zambia, the unbelievable look in the eyes of a young girl who at once fully sees her worth, the impossibility of seven humans with completely different backgrounds and lifestyles and preferences working together in perfect harmony for one glorious purpose, the glorious breakthroughs, the “only by the grace of God did this work out” moments, the expectation of praying with ten but instead joining voices and spirit with 100 or more to pray for their nation, the terrifying-turned-magnificent, the always unexpected but oh so necessary complete kindness of complete strangers, the complete and unfailing goodness that is this life.
I often have not the heart and hardly have the words to share the reality of it all, but please know this: whatever you read, whatever you see, reality was ten times harder, dirtier, sweatier and more emotionally challenging; and reality was at least seventy-three times more beautiful, more awe inspiring, more utterly humbling to behold.
