I’m in Georgia y’all! I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m surrounded by World Racers. I can’t believe I am working at Adventures. I can’t believe I’m living at the Hylton house. And I can’t believe I’m on another adventure!
God truly blows me away sometimes. For those who followed my Race, you know that I came out of a extremely painful season in my life right before I headed onto the field. While on the Race, the Lord brought so much healing to my heart and mind. The transformation was so huge that you could see an actual physical change in me. The Lord also worked just as hard on my whole squad. It was amazing to see how the Lord worked in and through each one of them and the transformation in all of us made me fall in love with the Race. I knew I wanted to be involved with the Race in the future, but I was not expecting the Lord to call me to something so quickly. But His ways are higher than mine and His thoughts are definitely higher than my thoughts. So one month after returning home from the Race, the Lord asked me to leave again. I wasn’t able to come right then, but I did move down to Gainesville the first week of March and have started digging into my new life of working, going to classes, ministering, and learning how our organization runs while balancing that with a social and spiritual life. It’s been great and I am truly blessed by all the new friends and coworkers I am surrounded by.
So what has the Lord been dealing with me about this past few weeks? Honestly just being real and present. Not just “being” who I am, but “being” where I am. One thing I noticed when I got here is that I heard a lot of reminiscing. As I read facebook statuses and blogs, and as I listened to conversations, I found that people were talking about how much they missed the Race and the people and ministry and the countries. Now this isn’t bad at all, but most of the time, these were the same people who only talked about home and family and friends while they were on the Race. It was funnier still when I sat down and realized I had done a bit of that myself.
What the Lord started teaching me in this moment was a lesson we all know in our heads, but we don’t really transfer that to our hearts. We have a tendency to romanticize people and places when we are not with/near them. It’s a very clever trick of the enemy. We spend our time daydreaming about a life that is safely unreachable as opposed to engaging and getting dirty in the life that is right in front of us.
The reality for Racers is that most of the problems that we dealt with before we left, were waiting for us when we returned home in some form or another, and now that we are home, it’s easy to forget the reality of how truly hard parts of the Race were.
It’s easy to daydream. It’s hard to “be” where you are.
So that’s my challenge to you and to myself. Choose to ask the Lord to show you how you can truly “be” in your life at this moment and be thankful for it. God wrote a story just for me and one just for you. I don’t want to miss anymore of my story.
