My lips begin to tingle and immediately I become aware of the incredibly spicy food I was currently stuffing my face with on our first night in Cambodia. We had spent nearly 7 days traveling and it felt good to sit down to a home cooked meal. However, I started to feel a similar numbness in the very pit of my stomach that felt all too familiar and suddenly I knew it wasn’t the food. Panic is starting to creep in and tears begin to form in the corners of my eye as I quickly dismiss myself from the dinner table with the knowledge that it would soon be hard to move my body. My heart rate begins to quicken as I hurry to the other side of the church and lay myself on the stairs. Panic continues to grow stronger as the tingling sensation moves to the very tip of my fingers and my toes. Each gasp for breath felt heavy and desperate. I lay there unable to find the words to speak or the energy to move. A physical relief felt so far away but my emotional comfort felt even farther. I wanted nothing more than to be at home with the people who understood me, who knew my deepest struggles and who knew the battle I was fighting.
Anxiety was a battle I thought that I had won until this moment, it felt like all of that time spent surrendering my anxiety to the Lord was for nothing. My first 3 months on the race were beautiful and had you asked me if I liked the race, I would have given you a laundry list of things I loved about my life but in this moment, none of it felt worth it.
As my heart rate slowed and my breathing evened out, I walked into a room where all of my teammates prepared for bed and I felt a loneliness I had never felt before. I had entered a space full of people who knew my story, who woke up alongside me, who said goodnight to me each night before closing their eyes to sleep, who worked beside me each day as we served the Lord, yet none of them knew me. They didn’t know my deepest fears, my inmost longings and desires. They didn’t know my small victories in conquering my enemies and they didn’t know the daily battles I was fighting. They didn’t know because I didn’t tell them.
I crawled into my half-setup tent and wept until I fell asleep asking myself how I had placed myself in such isolation. I was surrounded by people who loved me but they loved the false self that I had been presenting the whole race and in that moment I felt so alone in my mess because I had put myself there. I had made my true self invisible to my surroundings because I didn’t feel worthy of being known and loved by people. I felt unworthy of their love because I felt unworthy of my Papa’s love.
The entire month following my hardest night on the race, I tried (by myself) to work through all of the shame and guilt I had felt about wasting God’s time in trying to grow me in this season on the race. I quickly began working at growing an intimacy with the Lord that I had lacked before in hopes of speaking His truth over my harsh feelings toward myself. What I didn’t realize in that moment and what I know now, is that I was trying to earn my Father’s love rather than feeling the love that He had already covered me in.
At the end of our month in Cambodia, four World Race squads including mine came together for a weekend of fellowship and someone got up and said “this race isn’t about finding out who you are, this race is about finding out who Jesus is and when you find out who He is, you will find yourself.” In that moment, I realized that I didn’t need to have it all figured out and I didn’t have to keep trying to fix everything that I thought was broken, I just needed to chase after the Lord with everything in me and He would fix it all for me.
We are now in Thailand and I no longer wear a mask. Things that I once thought were too broken and unfixable, they disappeared as soon as I decided to surrender the veil that I had so beautifully crafted.
I will always be broken and life will always be messy but I no longer speak my shortcomings as my identity. So, let me reintroduce myself:
My name is Rachel Ann Pischke
I am a child and daughter of the one true King.
I am a beacon of Joy.
I am a friend of Jesus.
Papa delights in me and I in Him.
In Jesus Christ I have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
I am a new creation.
I am worthy, cherished and accepted.
I am known, chosen and deeply loved by my Daddy.
I am a delicately watered flower in a valley of thorns.
I forgive and I am forgiven.
I am His and He is mine.
‘And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.’ 1 Corinthians 1:30
