So today my team and some of our new church friends decided to spend a nice afternoon at the beach. I was excited to kick back and relax in the ocean because it’s super hot here in Portoviejo, Ecuador.
After church, we took an hour bus ride to this cute beach town, grabbed some yummy smoothies, and within minutes our toes were touching the water. Morgs and I sprinted into the water without a care in the world.
Let me just say that we’ve been to a handful of beaches on the race and this one is definitely one of the nicer ones!! Good-temperatured water, waves that are swimmable but not too high, and no rocks or seaweed.
So Morgs and I are casually swimming and chatting for a good while. Just being silly and laughing and enjoying the fact that we’re finally on a team together after waiting for 9 months!!!!
We were jumping the waves and it was all fun & games until a giant wave came crashing down. I thought I conquered it but suddenly I felt a sting that felt like Indiana Jones had lashed a taser whip around my wrist and pulled as hard as he could.
It took a few moments to realize that I had just been stung by a jellyfish.
To make things worse, as I’m trying to book it back to shore, I get straight up knocked out by a wave and literally slide into shore with sand in places where sand shouldn’t be.
And everyone is laughing at me because I just wiped out so hard and I’m trying to hold in the fact that there’s an excruciating pain shooting up my left arm.
Idk if you’ve ever been stung by a jellyfish before, but it felt like pins and needles were constantly poking into my arm. And nothing really stops it. I put my arm under the sand because apparently hot sand helps but in reality it did nothing. I basically just had to sit there in overwhelming pain and let it pass. It kept swelling and tbh I was just worried that it would stay like that forever…
My teammates ran up to me and were trying to help but I was so flustered I didn’t even know what to do. I was slowly but surely shutting down and entering into a mild panic attack…
And after a few minutes I realized a few things in that situation:
1) I hate pain
2) I kind of have a hard time letting people help me when I’m in pain
3) I shut down when things don’t go as planned
Yes, the pain was pretty excruciating, but I think what caused my panic attack was the fact that something bad had just happened that I wasn’t anticipating.
You see, I’m a pretty easygoing person day to day, but when hard things come up that I’m not expecting, it’s easy for me to shut down. And that’s what happened today at the beach. I started losing control and shutting down.
And I was sitting on a rock and my teammates were trying to help me and I was just so flustered and all I wanted to do was sit in a ball and cry by myself.
And then I looked out at the ocean and felt the Lord wrapping His arms around me in the midst of the pain throbbing up my arm.
“Mikayla, let me help you. I will take care of you. Trust me, my child. I will take care of you”
I will take care of you.
This is a common phrase I hear the Lord speaking to me. Because I struggle with feeling like I always have to have my life together. And it’s really easy for me to be joyful when circumstances are easy and fun, but when things get hard or unexpected, I can tend to shut down and get lost in my own thoughts. I tend to internally freak out in situations that I can’t control or where there are unknowns. It flusters me and it’s hard to trust The Lord in those moments!
So, I’m staring out at the ocean and realizing, once again, that the only constant place I’ll really ever be is in the arms of The Father. And when push comes to shove, He will be the one to take care of me. And one of the ways that I can let Him take care of me is by letting others in when I’m hurting instead of escaping by myself (because that’s a common thing for me). On top of that, when I don’t know what’s in front of me, I can rest knowing that the God of the Universe has me in His hands and will guide me where I need to go.
And that’s exactly where I want to be going into month 10. Sitting in the arms of the Father, enjoying my last two months on the race, and going all out until the end!!! Being present and not thinking about the new adventures that await me after the race. Pressing into my team, loving them unconditionally, and letting them love me back. Stepping out of my comfort zone, trusting God, and seeing how He blows me out of the water in those situations! And if it took me getting stung by a jellyfish to have that wake up call, then great: sting me 100 more times Lord!!!
You keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
[Isaiah 26:3-4]
In other news, I have a new team and I’m super pumped about it!! Team Serendipity (or lil’ dippies as I like to say). This will be my team that I finish the race with wahooo!!
