When people ask me about the race my first response is to tell them how excited I am. I tell them that I will be traveling to Thailand, Malawi, and Guatemala with some of the most incredible people I know who I haven’t even met yet. I tell them that I will be living very minimally and that I am so excited for what that alone will teach me. I tell them that I will be having the experience of a lifetime and I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that a year from today I will be halfway across the world. In response, those people tell me how excited they are for me to change, learn, and grow. They tell me how much I am going to love it, how I am never going to want to come back and that this will only be the beginning of my life of traveling the world changing one life at a time.
What I don’t tell most people is how terrified I really am. I am going to be leaving all of my friends and family behind. It’s not like I’m going off to college and those people will be able to visit me and I’ll be able to come back home. I won’t be able to comfort those I love when they need it. I won’t be there for any loss that my family or friends may experience. I won’t be there for my brother as he goes through his sophomore year of high school. I won’t be there for the graduation of some of my best friends. I won’t be able to experience anything that I am used to. But, that’s all okay. It’s okay (and normal) to be terrified of something like this.
A couple weeks ago, one of my close friends who will be going on the race with me texted me this: “Can I be real with you for a second? Do you ever get nervous about the race?”
Honestly, I had thought about that a lot, about how nervous I am. I really am nervous, I am scared, and I am worried. That is all okay, I think that all of those feelings are natural and important when you’re about to embark on anything that is unknown. I don’t really know what to expect to come out of the gap year. I have an idea of what will be happening, but there is no way to know exactly what will be going on throughout those nine months abroad. I think that it is necessary to be scared, nervous, worried, etc. because it shows that you’re thinking about it and you are being real with yourself.
What I don’t think is okay is to let that fear take control of you. I don’t think it is okay to become paralyzed with fear of the unknown. Whether you are doing what I am doing and going on a nine month missions trip, you’re going to college, you’re starting a new job, or you’re going into high school from middle school. No matter what you have ahead of you it is okay to be scared. Everyone’s future is unknown and that is one of the beauties of life, in my opinion. If I knew exactly everything that was going to happen to me it would take away from all of the raw emotion of every living moment. It would take away from leaning on God for comfort and understanding.
One of the beauties of not knowing what is ahead of you is that you get to rely on God. God knows what you’re going to go through, He knows that He can comfort you, He knows that you will in fact be okay in the end of it all. Jeremiah 29:11 says: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” With this verse, God declares that He has a plan for us, He will not put us through all things with the intent to give us a bright future. Although it is okay and normal to be scared of the future at times, it is also important to know that our future (no matter what it is) is in Gods hands.
