I recently was browsing mission trips and the world race website as I often do when my life feels boring and was thunderstruck by one question.
Are you living the life you’ve always dreamed of?
It was the catch phrase for the World Race which I actually found through a non-affiliated website. Huh. Am I? Am I living out the dream God put in my heart?
My first thought was, “Hey! I already did the world race and I’m STILL not living the life I dreamed of.” Then I thought, “what the hell am I doing then?”
2008 was one incredibly hard and wonderfully victorious year. There are relationships that formed there that leave me in longing on my lonely days. “Where is everybody? Why can’t anyone live in WA near me?” Then there are the relationships that never quite mended that I find myself thinking of with regret and tempered confusion. “Why couldn’t we get past that point? Why did I often feel like an outsider?”
I clicked on the link and went to the WR home page where I browsed the last 100 blogs. There was an update on the October 2009 team that I found myself staring at the team photo. Which person on that team looks like how I felt? Are there other people who know that they know that they know they are supposed to go on this trip and yet will never feel fully connected?
I remember taking our group photos and always feeling… huge. Not like fat or anything, but like I was expanding and I didn’t know how to fit in. It is a weird feeling I’ll tell you that much.
When I think about how I felt during the WR and now post-WR, during the hard times, I feel a sense of urgency rise up in me for the future squads. How can I find that person who, like me, craves community so deeply that they never seem to arrive?
Michael Hindes once said to me, “It’s interesting isn’t it? The things we want the very most are the things we have the most walls built up against.”
Continued in next blog.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so thank you to those of you still interested in reading blogs from me!
