Greetings from Transitionland!
Five weeks. Shoot dang, I’m landing on American soil in five short weeks.
I can barely wrap my head around the fact that it’s been almost a year since I left. It went by like a flash – so fast, barely comprehendible – and there’s absolutely nothing within my power to make time slow down.
Guilt tells me I should be more excited. Social pressure tells me I should be longing for the day we come home like everyone else around me (at least, it seems that way sometimes).
I should do this. I should feel this.
A friend of mine once told me about the freedom that comes with removing the word “should” from our vocabulary. It makes sense when I really consider it. If I stopped “shoulding” myself, I could stop living in a world of unmet expectations. I could be satisfied with the place God has me. I could stop judging myself.
My feelings around coming home are a mixed bag. In that sack is a tension between eagerness, relief, sadness, anticipation, fear, discomfort, and a whole bunch of things that surface from the deep, dark bottom as my time on the field trims shorter.
I’m excited. I’m terrified. I’m not ready for this amazing year to end.
It’s no secret that the process of growing and having my heart repeatedly broken by what I was seeing gave me a lot of anguish and pain on this journey. It sucked, but I can see how that pushed me to be the woman I am now. I’ve finally now reached peace and I don’t want what I have to end. I’ve finally gained the perspective around the pain points that I struggled with for so many months, and I want to hold on to this goodness as tight as I can. I don’t want to let go of the World Race.
Maybe it’s because I’m enjoying myself more than ever before. Maybe it’s because I know I’ll never have this type of community or these opportunities to work with different organizations around the world. Processing is a process, and I’m still in that now. I need grace for all the feelings surrounding this massive transition that I’ve yet to figure out.
When I take myself out of the judgement zone, I’m overcome with gratitude that I am not simply looking at home as the next best thing. For most of my life, I struggled to stay present. I always thought “when I get there or when I do this, things will be better.” That’s simply not true. Life has its sun and rain in every stage. It feels good to not wish away what I have right now.
Perspective is a gift, you know. I don’t always get it right, but when I do, I’m thankful to see things for what they are.
The truth is the World Race has been an incredible year. It has served as a catalyst for the way my life will go from here (more on that soon!) I’ve been transformed in the humbling, life-giving situations I’ve been thrown into throughout this wild journey of abandonment and service.
The World Race was one of the best years of my life, but it’s not all downhill from here. At least, I sure hope not. This is but a beginning.
God has sharpened me and flipped my world upside down. The plans I had for my life proved vain and I couldn’t be more thankful that it’s so.
And while I feel this daunting pressure to long for home more than I do, I have to remind myself that here is good and it’s right for me to be where I am. I hope this post doesn’t send a message that I don’t care for my loved ones stateside. Of course I do. I just don’t look forward to the monotony, the paper chase, the bubble that American life so often looks like. I hope to be an exception. I hope to continue seeking after Jesus as wholeheartedly as I am now for the rest of my days. I hope to set culture and not conform.
I know the very fabric of American society could pull me in the direction of apathy, of hunger for financial security, of anything and everything that will keep me from actually needing my Maker.
I just don’t want that. I don’t want to risk winning the worldly things and forfeit the blessings of abandonment. I don’t want to count comfort as anything but a loss of my deep longing for more of the Lord. I don’t want the safety nets. I just want more of Jesus.
And I love my home country, I really do. The Race, more than anything, has let me see the incredible privilege it is to be an American. I just want to fight hard against letting my priorities shift on account of convenience and comfort. I want to see my need for God in America as I do on the World Race.
So, instead of “shoulding” my way through these final five weeks, I’m choosing a different way. Instead, I could let home be home. I could tend to the calls of social pressures when I get back, or not. I could focus on who and what is in front of me, and where my feet are planted right now. I could soak in every precious part of what I still have of my World Race.
I could finish the Race strong and live my life as fully as God intends me to.
A friend who lives in Thailand long term told us to look at our last two months of the Race as a two-month mission trip. She said to get as excited as we would if we were leaving to do God’s work abroad for only two months.
I like that wisdom. I think I’ll take it and run for the next five weeks.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated, at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2
