Where Are You Going and What Are You Doing?
Where are you going and what are you doing? This two part question is posed at least daily by someone who has found out I am going on the world race. Are you ready for the honest answer? I don’t know… exactly.
First off, I have a route I am going on. But we’ve been told our route is subject to change, pending natural disasters, political unrest, denied visas, and looming surprises. But as of today my route is this: Haiti (January), Dominican Republic (February), Jamaica (March), India (April), Nepal (May), Malaysia (June), Thailand (July), Cambodia (August), Ethiopia (September), Rwanda (October), and Uganda (November). I will be in each country for about a month.
On to the question, what are doing? Again, I don’t know… exactly. But here are my thoughts—
I think a lot of us believe, whether consciously or subconsciously, we are what we do. I find myself falling into this trap all the time. When I meet a new person, the very first detail I am compelled to share is what I do for work. Do you find yourself doing that? It seems like people, when faced with making small talk with each other, the starting point is always dialogue around what we do. Even when I was a student at university, I was a painter who was studying fine art. That is who I was. I believe we all do this: we talk about our work even when we hate loathe what we do. We define ourselves from the starting point of what we do daily, what we have accomplished, and even what our future goals are.
And social media doesn’t help. We fill our feeds with pictures and videos of impressive hobbies, trips, and our daily moments of what we are doing. We are obsessed with measuring our greatness in likes, followers and views. We are constantly trying to feel the momentary ping of happiness when we see others are watching what we are doing through our social media accounts. And we crave to know what others are doing constantly.
All the time I feel the pressure to be doing something amazing because I know others are watching, judging, envying, criticizing, praising, and seeing. I feel like the ruler of my self worth is measured by what I do and how I convey my doings to others. This constant pressure to be performing is exhausting, its fake, and its empty. And by doing— feeling the need to do all the time makes me feel exhausted, fake, and empty.
I am not going on the race to do. I am not going because I will travel, to take amazing pictures, and to do cool stuff. To be honest, I have a number of foreign country traveling horror stories from these last 12 months. And I would be content to drink my coffee quietly on my bed every day and not going anywhere.
I am going on the world race not do or to go. I am going on the race to be and to become.
For me, the hardest thing in the entire world is to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is emotional risk. When we are vulnerable we take our emotions, our values, and core of who we are and we put it on a stage in which we have no control over the audience. We may be clapped and applauded, or we could get booed so heavily it devastates who we are for years, and even lifetimes. So far going on this adventure has been like that. Some people get it and are excited with me, but not everyone. To be vulnerable is the central most important quality any person must embrace in order to evoke internal or external change. Vulnerability is the act of opening ourselves up to not only criticism but transformation. If we do not present to the world and to one another this deeper true self, we choose to live a life only on the surface. This life is shallow, a half life. It is not a life which is full and deep. I want to learn to be vulnerable in this coming year in ways that devastate me and forever change this stubborn heart.
Secondly, I want to be with people. I want to share in their suffering and joy. Love is best demonstrated as a state of going to be with. The act of coming alongside someone, sharing in a task, sharing an emotional load, sharing in a meal, that is love. Jesus came down alongside us, not as a high king (even though he was) but as a servant. Jesus came down to be with us on our level, in our environment, in our human body no less! He experienced tiredness, abandonment by his friends, human sickness, exhaustion, fear for pain, frustration, and anger. He was fully human. And so mysteriously, fully God at the same time.
I want to be like Jesus in the sense he came down in solitary to experience human-ness. He came down to be like us and to be with us. To me there is no great act of love than to go be alongside someone. Is this not what we want the most, to have our family surround us at our wedding day, or our closest friends to comfort us at a funeral, to have our neighbors rally around when disaster strikes our community? I want to go and be with people in this sense, because I want them to understand in the same way I have come to be with them God came to be with them. I want people to know more than anything that God loves them, he loves this world. The most quoted scripture in the bible, John 3:16 so profoundly encapsulates this, God so loved the world that he gave His only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God came to be with us out of his profound love an he came to end the separation between God and man. He came to relate to us, to connect with us, to be with us, not just for a short time, but for eternity.
Lastly I want to become… there are so many things I could list after this statement. But more than anything, I want to become a daughter of God. For those of who are less familiar with this Christian rhetoric, what I’m basically try to say is I want to know I belong. I want this belonging to become who I am. That is why, lately as I’ve reflected on being a daughter, I realized I kind of suck at it. When it comes to responding to authority my natural response is to question and rebel. When it comes to accepting help and comfort my natural response is to flee. When it comes to taking emotional risks forward in the relationship I get lassoed by my own anxiety. I have high expectations of everyone around me and myself. But I don’t want to be like this.
When I think of someone who is a son or daughter of God, they give of themselves in relationship in abundance, in trust, and in freedom. Of course they are still human and they are not perfect, but they have a solid base which grounds them to their identity. I want to become like that. I want to trust in my leaders because I trust fully in God to have my back. I want to be open with my struggles and ushering in kind words and let them build me up. I want to be sure in who I am and attach my identity to an unchanging God so as I take risks I know ultimately I am secure. But becoming this person means reteaching my brain and disciplining my heart. And I suck at giving myself grace… and do you like how ironic that statement is?!
SO to sum up why I am leaving my career, my friends, my home to take a year to not know what I’m doing… well, there’s your answer. And to those of you who wanted to know the specific projects and tasks… I probably can’t tell you an answer that will make sense.
If you feel compelled to support me in anyway, I’d ask you pray for me. Prayer is my biggest need. Please pray for me in this moment because I am a hot mess. I give myself a “F+” grade on mentally processing this transition. I am engulfed in my own anxiety. Please pray also when I’m gone, pray that I will have the strength to be and to become.
If you feel compelled to financially support me, please know every time someone donates I am again reminded people are with me on this journey. Raising support prayerfully and spiritually is recurrent reminder my friends and family are behind me. I am approaching my first financial deadline on September 15th, which is $5,000.
Thank you to those who have already given, prayed, and taken time to read this far.
