Hey guys, so its been a while and I’m so sorry for that! Time has seemed to get away from me recently but I have known about this and what I wanted to say for maybe a month now (really bad I know I’m sorry!) but anyway it deals with me starting off with being crazy honest. So this whole World Race thing is beyond exciting but getting real with all of ya’ll, being committed to something like this isn’t always perfect or easy for me. Most of the time when I talk to people about this trip it is all about how exciting this will be and how much I will grow and how I have no clue what God will do in my life or others. While this is all beyond true and I am beyond excited to go on this journey I don’t always feel like this.
This is where the crazy honesty comes in.
Sometimes going on this is not what I want. Sometimes being apart of this is not something I look forward to, or an stoked about. Sometimes I wish I was going to have a more normal first year out of high school, and that I wasn’t being pushed so far out of my comfort zone. Sometimes I wish that I would be able to have my friends and family not countries away from me, and sometimes I wish God didn’t call me to this.
Around december the “honeymoon phase” of this trip seemed to wear off a little bit and the reality of everything that I was going to do began setting in. I not only wasn’t as excited and as happy about the trip but I became very lazy in trying to fundraise and avoided most things in regards to the trip because I was trying to take some sort of control of the situation, and not doing the work for the trip helped me pretend for a couple of seconds that this wasn’t the reality I would be going into.
Through all of this I knew in my mind that this was the plan God had for me and I knew it was better than all of the thoughts that I was conducting in my head. I knew and still know that Jesus is better than everything and that this next year will be all of the things I said my conversations are about when I discuss this trip with people. But I couldn’t get my head out of not wanting it, or struggling to be as happy as I was the months before the “honeymoon phase” ended about it.
Even though I felt this way, I didn’t want to. I was excited but at that moment I wasn’t. So I started praying and looking for answers as to why I may be feeling like that or what I could do to not feel like that, because I honestly wanted to be excited about the trip. It’s an exciting thing and it’s wonderful and I knew all of that, so I wanted to feel all of that again.
I eventually stumbled upon this prayer in a book I was reading: “God, you know my feelings are going haywire; they scream and shout that this situation is terrible and that there is no hope. God, I hope in you. I can’t see what you are doing, but I trust that you’re working this situation together for good. Thank you that you have promised to use it to make me more like Christ. This is what I want – it just doesn’t feel good today. Give me the strength to focus my eyes on you and not on what I can see.”
This prayer was basically all I was feeling especially the end of “this is what I want – it just doesn’t feel good today”. It was all of my emotions wrapped up in one. I found such relief from not only finding this but being able to pray it. I was not only not excited but I was feeling worn out and tired of feeling like every one was excited for my trip except for me. When I found this prayer I was at a point where I was just tired and was looking for God to hold me and to get me out of my little pit of not wanting to be taken out of comfort and the lifestyle and from the people and world as I know it. So then I did some more digging and found this video below. I hope you’ll watch it because it not only applied to me in this specific situation, but it could potentially apply to you. And if it doesn’t right now, I’m sure it will at some point.
Jesus is better. And when my heart forgets this, I pray that God makes my heart believe this which my mind already knows which is, Jesus is better.
I may be going on a mission field but I am still human, my journey to get there and during will not be perfect. I know for a fact that I can’t do the World Race by myself, I will need God to be my strength, my support, and much more because I am incapable. I think this was one of many of my realizations of that. But as I think about it, its an every day problem for every person. This thing that I “realized” was not only about the World Race but day to day life that my eyes seem to be shut to only because I’m used to my current setting. We aren’t where God wants us yet because we are not all in heaven having a party with him. We are in this broken down world and so we will come across trials and tribulations, and we won’t always be prepared. I wasn’t. So my prayer still not only for me but for you is that when our hearts forget that Jesus is better, and his plans are better that he will be our hope and we will look to him. His plans may not feel right in the moment or that day, but they are, so I pray we recognize this and look to him when we feel this way. He sees the big picture and so I hope we learn to trust him more because we judge on what we see rather than trusting his view of everything at times. And I pray that he helps us overcome these instances where we feel beaten down and need a little extra help, and that he is our strength. And I pray he will help our hearts to continue to remember that Jesus is better.
Thanks for listening once again, I just not only wanted to remind you and be honest with how this road for me isn’t always going to be a happy dandy time, it is and will be hard at points. But I also wanted to encourage you. I don’t know where you’re at right now, but this helped me at one point and it will again I’m sure, so I hope it will do the same for you. love you!
now its time to relax and reflect, peace out homies
(also please ignore any and all spelling errors, I tend to just get in a role of typing and go with it)
