two days ago, i had the privilege of sharing a part of my life journey, from my college years until now, and the lessons i’d learned with the college ministry at my church. the students, many of them from my alma mater (w00t w00t), were gracious listeners as i traced my story in a less-than-linear manner.
i tried starting backwards – that is, i shared what i most wanted them to remember before diving into the narrative of that season of my life. i had read on a blog about productivity a suggestion to list action steps first in the body of an email message (particularly if the email is going to be long), so i thought i’d apply the same principle as i shared my “message.”
the one takeaway i kept harping on as i skipped back and forth during my testimony was to keep some kind of journal, be it an actual notebook, a blog, or even a video/audio diary. i urged them to do this to record their history with God, so that they’d be able to to trace his faithfulness running through their lives. i shared as much as i believe God led me to share of my journey, which is probably why my story went all over the place.
ultimately, i wanted my story to communicate that that where i am now had very little to nothing to do with my personal achievement and everything to do with His grace. that God is in the business of writing best-selling stories – our very lives.
a few days earlier, i came across this post by daniel durick, who’s on the july 2010 world race. to me, it affirmed the value of the work that i do – sharing stories – and reminded me so powerfully of how nothing, even a single blog in the entirety of the world wide interwebs, escapes God’s notice. in the post, daniel shares an email he received from a perfect stranger:…I lost my one of my best friends when I was 14 to a rare autoimmune disorder called Evans Syndrome. It is a blood disease that mainly affects males, and the outcome is very grim… My friend fought a very brave fight his entire life, and on May 31st, 2005, he left this world to walk with God. His name was Daniel Durick.
Over the course of these last six years, I have randomly Googled Daniel’s name to read up on different memorials that people have set up on the internet about Danny because it reassures me that his life here meant something, and that other people have realized that too. He was always the one to smile when the outcome wasn’t bright, and that’s what I always had admired about him. If he was still here today, he still would have his toothy grin on him that was always so reassuring that no matter how bad your circumstances are in life, there’s always a happier side to EVERYTHING.I’ll admit, I’m not perfect and have recently been denying my faith because things in life haven’t been swell, and up till today, I have denied any existence in a greater being because I thought I knew better, and as I write this, I realize I have been wrong. I came across your webpage during one of my random Google excursions, which was kinda weird because I tend to Google Danny’s name every two months, and how I haven’t come across your page until now still amazes me. I was intrigued because you have the same name as my friend, and your personality and love for God jumped out at me enough to make me curious enough to browse through to read up about what exactly you were doing.I guess I’m writing this to say thank you. Things in life have been tough, and I know everything will not change over night, but the fact that you just packed up your life to change others lives made me realize that I need to look at my life and smile and thank God that there is a happier side to EVERYTHING. And just seeing what you are doing has only reassured me that even though my Danny is gone, there’s another Daniel out there that is in every way living life the way my Danny lived his.
to current/upcoming world racers: the devil wants you to think that blogging isn’t worth the time, that you should only focus on ministry, exclusively in the present, that you’re not a good enough writer, blah blah blah. however, the truth is that the time you invest in writing in your blogs, sharing your photos, creating those videos, will yield an eternal reward. the devil would rather you quickly forget how far God’s brought you along the journey. marking the milestones, like samuel did, will encourage you later on when you face a new set of philistines in your life.
by all means, please do try your best to observe rules of grammar e.g., knowing the proper use of “i” versus “me” (i = subject pronoun, performs the action; me = object pronoun, generally preceded by a preposition). but no need to write like shakespeare. God has something to say through your life – and only through you, no one else – and if you let him, he will say it and people will hear.
