My shoes aren’t scuffed and my socks are clean. My clothes aren’t torn and dingy. My journal is unmarked, and the pages of my Bible aren’t bent out of shape. My hands aren’t blistered, my body isn’t sore and my heart hasn’t been broken yet. It’s all new, these people, this passport stamp, this year. It’s the first day of my race. And I’m not ready. I don’t have a clue what I’m walking into. I feel spiritually deaf, mute, and blind. I know soon this day will feel a lifetime from me. And it will be. I know that all too soon I’ll miss it, and be sick for it, and long for it back the way I do for each country that was once to me a momentary home.
So before days and conversations, jokes and memories, airplane rides and boarding passes blur together into one beautiful year I’ll sit still and remember this day. I won’t forget waking up at 4 am and throwing my shades on to pack because mornings and sunlight together aren’t my friend. I won’t forget my first time standing shakily with one year’s worth of possessions strapped to my back. I won’t forget the fog out the window and the lights in the darkened airport sky. And even if I wanted to, I could not forget my outfit. World race t-shirt, headband, and fanny pack. Mismatched socks and chaco’s, athletic shorts two sizes too big, and a flannel that came nowhere near matching, as if it had anything to match. I’ll remember feeling sly when I made it through airport security with an entire tube of toothpaste over the liquid capacity. And I’ll remember how foreign home can feel before you leave it.
Up until this moment, I thought all I wanted was to get on this plane. I was wrong. In my quest for adventure I seemed to have forgotten that adventure is the essence; well, one of many the many essences of who God is. He made this life to love. And I want that life; the one He has for me. Because the one I have for myself is dull and dry and colorless. It pales in comparison to what I feel each moment of the days I let God make of my life what he will. I want so much more than a year of excitement, even though it’s a given when you’re chasing after God. But I know that in order to get the life God wants for me, I had to give up the life I want for myself. And it’s the same for us all. It’s a sacrifice that sometimes looks like choosing him over the parties and addictions, the unhealthy relationships and ways that aren’t of God, which isn’t easy. But somewhere the idea came along that God wants to take all the fun away. That’s a lie. The happiness that sin brings is an illusion. It’s not real and it leads to death. If I were satisfied in my sinful ways I wouldn’t have sought out God, and if God didn’t fulfill me I wouldn’t still be choosing him. When you give your life over, He will give it back, and in a way you’ve never known it before.
We’re getting close now. Out the window islands and blue have been replaced with patches of land that focus into mountains, trees and homes. Vibrant rooftops intertwine with shacks and thatched tin roofs. Mountains are surrounding us and ground is coming fast. It’s all beginning now. I am moments away from Central American soil. The shaking of my heart follows the jolts that the plane sends me into. I’ve seen a million descents but they never cease to floor me; new land below me, new air in my lungs. I wanted this moment to feel real, but a life this beautiful rarely does. An airplane ride won’t do it for me, and neither will a 9 month trip around the world. But in my ongoing quest to find more heaven here on earth, I’m realizing that this life is just a prelude to an incomprehensibly better one. So let’s try and live for the kingdom right now. This is crazy, absolute nonsense, sending a bunch of teenagers out to change the world. But it’s Bible. Some of us are older than the disciples. Our tires meet the ground with a jolt. Our plane shakes from resistance of the wind. We stop. We’re here. The beginning is over, but the best part is now.
