When I left for my race in January, I was a different Taylor.
I was living my life. I have a great family, good friends and an opportunity to get an education and earn money. When I say I was living, I don’t mean I was fully alive. There was an ache in my soul I couldn’t shake. There was this desire to leave and explore places foreign to me. This need to go and see God’s people where they’re at and love them. This feeling that where I was wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
And so I left.
Left to go on this adventure where I travel to 11 different countries in 11 months with a group of 40 something strangers. This adventure where I do things and see things and feel things I’ve never done, seen or felt before.
I thought I needed to go because I wasn’t meant to be in the States anymore. Because I needed to do something meaningful. Because God was calling me.
God’s been showing me in the past five months that it’s so much more than my love for the nations or a call to foreign missions. It’s so much more than an adventure- a cool experience I’ll tell my grand kids about someday.
It’s a journey of self-REdiscovery.
It’s an environment where I get to live in a community that’s honest with me. A community that fights for me. A community that calls out my crap with love and urges me to be better, to be closer to Jesus. A community that really takes the time to see me, and tell me the things they see to build me up.
I’ve looked into the eyes of widows. Seen the pain that gnaws away at their spirit every single day. I’ve shared smiles with children who don’t have nearly enough to eat everyday. Seen their hunger for a life that’s more. I’ve embraced missionaries who have moved far away from everything they’ve known. Seen their determination to love the snot out of their new homes. I’ve listened to the giggles of kids living in slums of capital cities in Central America and Southeast Asia. Seen that if you close your eyes and listen, they sound the same.
Seeing what I’ve seen and doing what I’ve done has changed me. It’s torn me up and stretched me thin. It’s bruised my heart and rubbed me raw. There have been days when I want to come out of my skin seeing that this world just isn’t fair and that justice seems a long way off.
In month one when I thought about what it would be like to go home in December, I had romantic dreams of returning to my same life a better version of myself and fitting the new me into my old life.
Five months later I think about what it will be like going back home and my dreams are still romantic, but much different.
Friends who are engaged today will be married when I return. Friends who are single today will be in relationships when I return. School will still be school but I will have bigger dreams and an outlook on education taught to me by the starvation for opportunity I see in Burmese refugees. Life will be different, and I’m realizing that I’m okay with that. I can’t squeeze this new Taylor into the mold I was barely fitting into before. I don’t want to go back to the same life I had before. I want to dream bigger dreams for my life in the States than I ever thought possible. I want to make a difference for those around me. I want to see God’s kingdom come to earth. I want to see people fed, healed and loved. I want more.
At the end of this month, my month six of this eleven month whirlwind, I have to be fully-funded in order to stay on the field and finish. I need $1,616. I’m halfway through and it’s unreal how much I’ve already learned and changed.
I’m not done yet.
I’m not coming home.
Help me stay. Help me finish. Help me continue to wrap my arms around kids who need love. Help me continue learning from people who have experienced an insane amount of pain and still have joy every single day. Help me continue to live in this once-in-a-lifetime community that pushes me farther than I think I can be pushed. Help me continue seeing this world through the eyes of it’s creator.
I’m not coming home.
No, not yet.
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