My eleventh man, our eleventh month of relationship, while on my eleven month journey to eleven countries. I pray this will benefit future racers who, before beginning their World Race will consider the effects of going on mission with a boyfriend or girlfriend back home.
When you live on the mission field everything is more time intensive, you will have a full schedule more months than not. Days of ministry that are easily over twelve hours long, and all the tasks to take care of yourself and your team. Take for example the task of doing laundry without a washing machine. It starts with the fact that your clothes smell abnormally bad, you scrub the clothes in a bucket then have to rinse each item and wring it out, you hang them up but because its monsoon season it could take days to dry so in the meantime birds poop on them, mangos get thrown at them, the clothes have been blown onto the nearby barbed wire fence or they fall off your third floor railing onto the tops of the neighbors trees. Wash and repeat was a regular cycle. Now consider the divine intervention necessary to connect with people back home when Wi-Fi is an elusive, mystical signal. Only three of my nine months have I had Wi-Fi in my host home. Every other month it took an act of God to be able to communicate. Imagine convincing a teammate who wanted to rest on an off day that they really want to join you to cross over the river and through the woods to a café or mall where there might just be Wi-Fi, you’ve spent money on a taxi or bus, you’ve now spent money for an overpriced drink to gain access to a password that gets you the worst Wi-Fi, possibly bombarded by your entire team, the signal gets weak or it gets cut because you’ve taken up to much table time, now it’s off to another café, and if you luck out when you pass by the trash cans down the street it’s a victory even if there is a rat that scurries by. You may have to trade your adventure day in for an adventure to find the one sweet spot where your Wi-Fi call won’t be dropped in minutes. Of course there also has to be time left to do the journey markers (World Race homework) and blogs needing to be posted. All this to say it will not be easy for you to invest in your relationship. If you do and it’s not reciprocated it will hurt exponentially more because of the lengths to which you have gone to carve out time for those precious moments to somehow make it work.
You both will have to fight for your love!
I wish I could say that I will arrive home to the warm embrace of the significant other who wished me farewell. That dream crashed and burned right before my flight to India, not such good timing in that my broken heart had me praying the plane would do the same thing. After sacrificing much, loving wholeheartedly, and praying fervently for seven months on the field I made a choice to end my relationship. Why? He quit on me long before my decision. He stopped prioritizing me. He chose the laundry list of things to do, people to see, and places to go over the time to invest in us. He grew tired of trying. Although I now know a whole new understanding of tired I didn’t get tired of him, he was a source of refreshment, I waited with a sense of expectancy for those special times of reconnection. Will your significant other do the same?
Am I regretful that I carried my ex-boyfriend around the world in my heart? No! I loved loving him, it brought me energy and life to have people on three continents and seven different nations praying for him. It made me happy every time I wrote down every funny thing that happened in a day just so I could share my life with him. Will he or she choose to love you even when it’s not convenient?
With all that said I have been learning to live by some new standards because I have fully grasped the truth that because I was worth dying for, I am more valuable than to be neglected! I also trust that God was reminding me through the significance of the number eleven that one beside itself doesn’t make a couple.
I am 35 so the season of waiting for marriage has been long and hard. Another failed relationship and I now know how to better guard my heart. Be careful not to have conversations about marriage if you are still on the field. By month five of my race, my ex-boyfriend and I had overcome many of the struggles of distance and time apart. I felt safe to allow myself to dream with him, we talked about marriage and we started developing a plan for the next season. Such a short time after these conversations he became discontent and restless with the waiting. There is no better way to eliminate a potential match than long distance for long periods of time. You will only have success if both see it as an opportunity to delve deep in your communication. You will no longer have the luxury of fun dates to move your relationship along, and you can’t sustain a relationship if its only skin deep and the skin you are in is a mobile device. What if that mobile device breaks? I spent a ridiculous amount of money replacing my device and a week later when I finally got back on the grid knew his heart towards me had changed. You will come to know if that person is pursuing their relationship with the Lord, because He informs us how to love like He does. As an act of the will, a choice to love self sacrificially against all the odds.
On the World Race you have an opportunity to discover yourself. There are resources everywhere and people to help along the way. With a better understanding of who the Lord has created me to be I also understand why I couldn’t allow complacency into my relationship. I have the personality of a prophet, that is my redemptive gifting. This means I am committed to truth regardless if anyone agrees, this means I see things in black and white, darkness and light, right and wrong, that I judge and evaluate everything, this means I am compulsively verbally expressive, I take initiative, I need to have goals, objectives and a reason to live, I am compelled by honesty, integrity, and transparency, I am a problem solver, re-builder, and visionary. I ruffle a lot of feathers because I don’t want to settle for stagnancy. I want to keep growing through not only knowing but communicating. I am a game changer, I adjust the atmosphere and I desire for everyone else to also have passion and zeal too. I was not thriving in a relationship of shadows. Consider if your significant other will remain faithful and committed when there are influences of all kinds back home?
This situation of mine is painful but in time God will heal this wound. He has made many promises. In Nepal my little brother, Caleb, heard from the Lord and gave me something of his that was more valuable than he could realize. His necklace, a cross with a wedding band around it and a passage of scripture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of you heart. Psalm 37:4
I won’t deny I have been angry at God for not being united with the spouse I long for. Following my break-up, I was found sobbing on the floor of a room in our home. I was not only mourning the end of my relationship but the end of what felt like my last hope for a family of my own. With increased age its less likely to have a child, or a healthy child and I was pissed. I couldn’t understand why the Lord would have me deliver a sermon about the ministry of reconciliation and then my life would point to the opposite. I had to have a plan to adjust my perspective because I wasn’t in a healthy place and had to take captive all my thoughts and questions, placing them into the hands of Jesus. I knew that if I didn’t take steps to let the Lord into my heartache that my faith was in jeopardy. I started reading the Psalms and every day went to a park across the street from our home, sat on a bench and praised the Lord. I read the first book of Psalms throughout the month. I also reached out to a mentor who I knew would provide me with prayer coverage, I found a bible study on living single that I started with my team, I found books to supplement my time in the word. Actually, a book I had been wanting to read was in a cabinet, left by a past World Race team. While reading “The Shack” I had my biggest epiphany and it changed my relationship with God. I had always said that marriage was beyond my control, that it was a God thing. The Lord revealed to me through the book that it’s not within His control either! Well, it is but He will not violate the free will choice of a man to decide if I am the one for him. God can place us on the same path, even at the same desk but he has every right to opt out, and so do I. The choices we make may foil the plan God has but He does make all things work together for our good and he will set us back on the right path. I know I need a man who so clearly hears from God that he would know what to do to not lose the treasure God had blessed him with.
In India God rescued me, He provided a community of supportive believers by way of Pearl City Church. He ministered to me the first day of worship at church with the song by Passion Conferences “His love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me.” The sermon message being all about true love, His love, how He teaches us to love! Throughout the month I was also tremendously blessed by the long term missionaries working at the Adventures in Missions base camp in the city. My squad mates rallied around me and while shedding tears with me they affirmed who I am and built me back up again. Of course there were also the precious children of Sarah’s Covenant Homes that made my heart a happy one.
I am now seeing the end of this story and journey as the beginning of another, awaiting with anticipation and excitement the amazing adventure that’s next, because, as much as I’m living for the Lord I’m not a nun and I will have a love story in which I get to be loved by Him through someone. I not only get to focus on and love the Lord but also get to spend my days loving others through my relationship with Him.
Will your relationship survive the test of the World Race? If it does then celebrate the stamina, rejoice at what will more than likely be a lifelong union. If it doesn’t then you are in good company, as many have gone before you leaving a tear blazing trail. Remember “You are here” isn’t a forever place on the map of your heart, it’s a race so run toward the path of hope!
P.S. If you do break-up and Asia is on your route then you will be made to feel like a rock star by all the masses of people who want to take a picture with you and that’s something that will make your day!
Still Smiling!
