It’s been a long time.
Things have changed. All of the things have changed.
It’s winter now and there’s white frozen glitter on the ground and I take two steaming hot showers a day to keep my toes warm. It was once fall and a bunch of us crammed about fifty thousand pumpkin lattes into our bellies because they are synonymous with cute sweaters and pumpkins. The summer was ice in our drinks and outdoor birthday parties with melting ice cream. The first Christmas home was intense. We can leave it all at that, I would say.
But there is no denying what happened out there. I’ll be reading a book at a cute little French bar with my waffle fries and a bartender who tells me why the egg in the whiskey sour makes it so much better, more authentic; and it’ll hit me that there is no way in the world, while I was on the World Race, that I could’ve gotten a raw egg in my drink just to create a delightful froth. But I do remember the manager of the restaurant in Nepal whose crow’s feet were so intense that the fact that he may have been stalking us was ignored. That was an incredible margarita.
My (now) husband went on the World Race two years before I did and our experiences were immensely different. I’d seen all of his videos a hundred times and read his co-travelers’ blogs just as much. There were some serious expectations set up, ya’ll! And ‘they’ will tell you not to have those and you will be real confident about the fact that you don’t have them. But you will. Just go ahead and deal with it. You have expectations.
You can read a thousand blogs about what to pack but if you don’t stay honest with yourself, you will fail at packing.
WOMEN: Bring body products that you actually like and that work for YOU, not the person whose blogs you love so dearly. You will end up trying to find your good ones all over the world and it will not happen and you will be annoyed because you could’ve bought yourself an espresso on an off day instead of that overpriced bottle of watered down lotion. Do not think that Jesus is asking you to smell bad or not shave your armpits or your head. Do not think that Jesus is asking you to not feel like a beautiful woman and do not listen to people when they tell you that what you chose to feel good in is an issue. But do not think that He won’t do something drastic to get you to remember how beautiful you are, either. And don’t worry about it when people comment, because they will. Cool thing about Jesus is He doesn’t exist to bind us, and don’t let folks do that to you either. Overpack if you want, who cares. Be yourself. Just don’t expect others to coddle the overpacking because Jeff Tyner will whoop your — just be willing to deal with your own decisions, you know?
MEN: Ask Jeff Tyner.
On the race I started out as a team leader, then became a squad leader, and then was on a team as just a regular gal. Want to guess which of those periods I enjoyed myself the most?
Team leading was hard. Really hard. If you’ve never led six entirely different people who are attempting to live and work with one another for 24 hours per day, guess what it’s really fun. They give you a whole bunch of stuff at training: what will happen and how you should do this whole thing, and you will write all of it down in great detail and plan to go back to it when the going gets rough. But you will forget every word and will forget to go back to it. But everything they do tell you is true, so TRY. And you WILL have a best friend on your team that will remind you that you’re in the right place. And you’ll all laugh about it later. LISTEN WAY MORE THAN YOU TALK.
Squad leading was hard. Really hard. If you’ve never led fifty entirely different people who are attempting to live and work with one another for 24 hours a day, and doing it with three other entirely different people trying to make a decisions, guess what it’s really fun. We trained for a month on this and mostly laughed a lot. And you will forget that Jesus gave you a best friend on the first team, and He gave you another one and another one and you WILL survive. You will go through the trenches. But it will ALL BE GOOD. Do not forget that. LISTEN WAY MORE THAN YOU TALK.
So when you’re ON a team and not the leader of one, remember how important your role is and don’t get all kinds of caught up wishing you had a title. The title is not easy and your pride will whoop your — just know you are incredible, alright? Know that you supporting your leader is an incredible ‘title’. Don’t ever get tangled in thinking the leadership is wrong and therefore becomes an incredible distraction to the mission. And whoever makes the decisions to put you where you are, they can be TRUSTED. Because they know. They know where you need to be and even if they don’t, they know Jesus will bless WHAT. EVER. We’re over a year home now and I could not be more thankful that I had that third “season”.
Be yourself. Know who you are in the Image and be well with that. Be well within your soul and be honest to it as well. If you want to step down, don’t let pride get in the way. If you want to be a leader, go by example rather than demand. If you don’t get your way, ride it out and know that IT IS WELL. Cool? Cool.
Do not be mean to people, ever. Not cool, man.
There’s gonna be a lot of stuff that happens to you when you are done with the field. You’re going to go between knowing exactly what’s next, to a life tragedy, to not knowing at all what your life is. AND THAT IS OK. Sulk for awhile if need be. But it WILL be figured out. And it will all be different for everyone. And you will be blessed by every single thing. And it will take different amounts of time for everyone so try not to compare. But maybe only go so long realizing what you need to do differently without actually doing it. Recognize and do if you have any energy at all. SEEK.
You will create emergency connections on the race. People who become your life line for sanity. Stick with them when you are done. Ask them for favors, remind them that you need them, and I promise you they will be the type of folk that drop everything for you. But be OK if the effort is not reciprocated. Because I promise you that sometimes it will not be. Try anyway. DO.
When you meet back up with them after a year of hardly talking and nothing will have changed, you will still have 50 brothers and sisters. They will still know you inside and out and you will not be able to hide it. Laugh uncontrollably again about how your bro pee’d on his foot on video and your sister lost her shorts in the Nile River. Remember that you will never have a family like this again and by God, do not ignore them. Do not act like they did not change your life. Jump down off the horse and be their emergency lifeline. Keep making the effort to connect. Don’t let them go. Do not.
This family, we’ve been through so much. Marriages, break ups, break outs, funerals, varying weights and beliefs and hair colors and onesies. There’s not a one life thing that has been skipped by this group. A few of us are even back on the field and some of us think that is absolutely nuts. Some will get bitter about the experience and wonder why they chose to do it but it will only be because it was/is hard coming home. Eventually all will come around to remembering just how unmatched the experience and this raw family was.
You were meant to live and work with people who are different than you. You were meant to love every single one. It’s OK if you maybe might not like them a little bit a lot, but love them. And remember that Image. Let peace wash your face in every title, every family member, and every single tiny bit of time you ever got to spend with these wild people.
You are family now.
Don’t forget.
And forget everything I just said and have your own experience.
