Being on the race has meant that much of the time I can’t do things the way I want when I want. With rules like never going anywhere alone and living in community with 6 other people who have different ways of doing things and preferences means that most everything is up for negotiation. How much of a schedule do we want? How fast do we walk? How do we spend team money? And it has been hard. Being dependent on someone in order to go somewhere, submitting to the limits placed on me by the team, dying to myself.
In the midst of this, I had been asking God to do something different in my life, something I hadn’t experienced of Him before.
Our off day Sunday came along and I wanted to 1) To visit Global Café ministries’ open house and 2) get a hair cut. The salon was around the corner and the café about a 15 minute walk away.
Well, my buddy who had been planning on coming with me ended up being sick and after asking everyone else on my team, it looked like I was stuck.
With a deep sigh, I went downstairs and sat for awhile. And then I prayed.
God…you know that I want to go, but you are the one who is in control of this day and the one who gives and withholds so I will accept this as coming from your hand and surrender the outcome of this day to you.
Up until then it had just been hard. The effort to continually die to myself had not yet materialized into anything.
About 30 minutes later, two of my teammates came down and said they were heading to the store. I asked if I could come and go to Global Café since it was right next door. One said, ok but only for 10 minutes anticipating needing to mingle with a crowd. We arrived, and met Tanya who said the crowd had just left and ended up staying over an hour. Many things happened in that conversation that gave me a deep sense that God had intended for us to meet her and hear her story. Had we arrived earlier we wouldn't have talked to her and would have left early because of the crowd.
The only reason I’d heard about the open house was because I went to the church nearby that Sunday. And the reason I’d gone to that church was because I’d left my bible at bible study and the small group leader needed to give it back to me and he happened to be going to that campus that weekend. And the only reason I’d gone to the bible study was because a girl from PHOP invited me and once I arrived, I discovered that he was the same leader that another friend had introduced me to.
Later that night, I figured the salon was closed and accepted that this day would end with no haircut. Well, my buddy felt better and said let’s go. We went but the place was closed, and the woman inside walked us to another place. In this other salon, my buddy met a 16 year old girl named Keo and instantly bonded with her and ended up visiting her the rest of our time there. And I realized, had I gotten my haircut earlier that day, they never would have met.
I’d never had a day like that before. A day where it was so clear that all of my steps had been ordered by the Lord and that by surrendering, things ended up happening the way they were supposed to. It felt like a reward, a taste of a new and different thing to encourage me to persevere in this process of dying to myself.
