I have been alive for 7174 days.
271 days I was on the race. That’s not even 5 percent of my life, but that was all it took for the Lord to stir something inside of me that has left me coming back day after day. He said “Go” 365 days ago and I left full; of who I thought I was, full of conceived ideas about what my life has to offer, of myself. He says now, “I have had my way with you,” and I come back empty; emptied of the doubts that once took over my mind, emptied of every piece of myself, of the sins that once completely overcame me. I went on the race for a lot of reasons, but looking back now, it was the last straw. The race was the last hope that maybe I could be repaired after all, maybe I could be put back together after wrecking myself for such a large percentage of my life. Maybe He would take me back after all. And oh man did He. He left the ninety – nine in ways I could never have imagined.
It was most definitely not a glamorous time, though. It wasn’t this time where He simply glued me back together the way He saw fit. No, He broke me until I had no choice but to rely solely on Him and that’s when the beauty came. He fought for me and I began to understand that His love bleeds for us and if you let it, it will bleed you dry in the best way too. It will wreck you for the sake of righteousness. It will take you out into the depths of the wilderness while it speaks tenderly to you, no fear in sight. All of those days when my entire physical being was screaming give up, He was whispering I am the Great I am. He is the kind of God that whispers those kinds of things, the kind that makes you worship the humility. He is a God that encounters. Day by day He walked alongside me, I was never alone. Not in the 6903 before, not in the 271 more now.
So I sit here at the Fort Lauderdale Airport on the 7174th day of my life, with tears pouring down my face, being stared at by many Americans, marveling at how He chose me. How He continues to choose me. How He will always choose me.
