Anyone who knew me when I was younger knew I was a dreamer. My teachers could definitely tell you how much of a dreamer I was by the daily day dreaming I would in class to the crazy ideas my papers would have. I have always dreamed of other worlds and just plain out somewhere that I would call my paradise. As time went on and I became older I still was a dreamer but after awhile I believed that I would never find paradise and that I was always doomed to nothing exciting.
When I first discovered the World Race I thought to myself how incredible that looked to travel the world and be a part of so many different cultures but I never thought I would ever be able to experience anything that amazing. So I let that dream go out the door and continued on with my life. But every now and then it would come back into the back of my mind and I would just dream about the chance doing something that amazing then I would retreat back to the thought of I will never do anything like that.
The day I got accepted to the race I instantly started crying because I felt as if a dream was coming true. But sure enough Satan had a way of coming into my head and telling me lies like ‘You will never get the money to do this’ and ‘Something will happen to make it impossible for you to go.’ Then when I was finally on the race he continued to tell me how I will not stay on the race because I would get the funds but then I was fully funded and then he would strike back with you are going to be sent home or something will happen and have to go home. It became hard to believe that I was truly living my dream.
Something that God has been walking me through since the beginning of this crazy thing called the race is walking me through the daughtership that he has for me. Thanks to the book that our squad mentor handed me at launch, Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship by Jack Frost, God has been opening my eyes to so much. I started the book in Ecuador but after two chapters I set it down and did not pick it back up until recently. During the time of not reading the book God really had started to work through me and pulling out the weeds that were not of him. One of those weeds was the idea that I am not worthy, meaning I am not worthy of anything good including experiencing the paradise he has for me. God has shown me time after time on the race of how worthy I am and how much he wants to show and give me.
There have been multiple moments on the race that I have looked around me and said to myself ‘I can’t believe this is real life and not just that but my life!’ One day in Thailand our host took us to a coffee plantation in the mountains that actually grow coffee beans for Starbucks coffee. On the ride there and back I just looked around while riding in the back of a truck in the mountains of Thailand all of the sudden Coldplay’s song Paradise came on. Through that song God started to so me how I am such a dreamer and how I started to let go of those dreams because I doubted myself and Him. He started to show me that when I am walking in His daughtership for me that I am always in paradise. There is never a dull moment and that He wants to give me the world and more because he loves me and only wants the best for me, all I have to do is trust and depend on him.
So I end this with I am living in paradise all the time and that it is only because I am with my God all the time. He has given me the world I used to dream about as a kid and has shown me how much more He dreams for me. So I made this little video of different clips from traveling on the race that I had those ‘I can’t believe this is real life right now!’ moments.
