Less than two full weeks into the Race, I don't think I expected to see so many areas for growth so soon. But I don't think I expected to be so open to them.
Last week I was living high on the excitement of what I love – people, travel, new places and faith. I was swept away by my emotion so much that when I experienced external conflict for the first time only a few days into the trip, I was devastated. Not only is conflict something I have not historically handled well, it pointed to a particular type of internal conflict that I am familiar with swallowing and pushing down, content to turtle-shell into fake wholeness rather than look what makes me broken in the face and confront it with the power of the Spirit in me.
I was mad with the Lord. I immediately questioned why it had to come up now, why the World Race, why it hadn't even been a week and I was falling into the same thought patterns and behavioral habits that I was hoping to flee in eleven countries in eleven months. I realized that maybe part of me had come on this trip in order to let it fix my problems for me, since my conflict with conflict had rendered me useless in facing my own issues.
Sadly for me, physically going somewhere – fleeing – does nothing for your demons. Being in community is not for hiding from the person you've been and pretending to be someone else. Going on a mission trip does not make you a perfect person or even better in the eyes of God or man.
The World Race is not about forgetting who you were before, leaving it all behind, and becoming someone new. If you're thinking about going on the World Race to let it make you a different person, go get a job or go to grad school.
The World Race is about letting community become your 24/7 mirror in order to see yourself honestly. Rather than fleeing from what you've been, it's about learning to confront everything you've been and are and what you've done and the choices you've made. To talk about it. To process it. To admit it.
To look in the face of your sinfulness and say, "I might actually struggle with this."
To look at your selfishness and say, "I'm not sure I've been caring about other people's success as much as my own."
To experience old thought patterns and say, "I really do struggle with purity."
To see yourself behave like you always have and say, "This is who I have become, and this is not holiness."
To admit that you might be embittered, angry, hurt, grieving, confused, not all together, terrified of failing, stuck in a rut of performance, drudging through the motions of religious shoulds and shouldn'ts, short of breath at the thought of rejection…
to take all of that
look in the face of the One whose eyes and smile say he already knows everything there is to know
and say with full confidence,
"this is where I am right now and I think I might need some help"
and have him say right back to you,
"I've never loved you more."
Denial is no way to live; it's only a way to exist. The only way to become the people God has imagined and envisioned us to be is to declare a resounding yes when there are things to work on, to saddle up with your chaps of the Spirit and your cowboy hat of salvation and take the bull by the horns, no matter how big and nasty the beast may seem.
I assure you, the beast of conflict within yourself or with others is never bigger than Love or Grace, and when the conflict goes away, those two will still be there. Abundantly. Asking for no apologies or explanations or justification. Just there for you to have. Inextinguishable. Inexhaustible.
That doesn't mean the going won't get tough, but in the words of our squad coach Betsy, "Peace is not always community."
Ironically, communities and individuals that pursue healthy conflict often end up at peace.
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