My sistas after church one day in Albania.
You can’t change the world until you’re first changed yourself.
The World Race is about stepping out of yourself and stepping into the identity that God has for you.
Even in the little, often overlooked or excused things.
Sometimes community is messy. Feedback and calling each other intro greatness is hard stuff. When your brother or sister sits you down and tells you how you’re not letting people love you, or how your mannerisms that you don’t realize you do eclipse your heart and give people the wrong impression of your intentions.
Example: I have some level of insomnia. There are entire weeks of my life that I don’t sleep. (That only happens two or three times a year.) There are other periods of my life that I sleep fine if it’s quiet and dark. But most of the time, I just half-sleep all night. Here on the World Race, I sleep every single night with an eye mask and ear plugs, otherwise I literally will not sleep. If we have bunk beds, literally every time my bunk mate moves, I wake up. It is extremely frustrating, and it’s no ones fault. So I get really frustrated at myself. I just don’t understand why my body won’t sleep sometimes. So, apparently I sigh. Loudly. And repeatedly. And it comes across as me being a jerk and mad at the world.
Oops.
To be honest, I didn’t even realize I did it. I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve never knowingly expressed frustration in my life, cause we all have. But this time, I truly wasn’t aware that I did this.
Maybe it’s cause I don’t have siblings who notice all my little quirks and such?
But now I have six, wonderful, honest sisters. And me sighing when I can’t sleep has come across as selfishness and frustration.
Again, oops.
I know it sounds little, but we have a saying here on the Race that goes, “Perception is reality.” Regardless of the fact that I know I was sighing at myself and my body, my sisters’ reality was that I was mad at all of them and not getting my way. That’s their reality.
It’s like having a mirror. One of those double sided ones that you use for your makeup. One side is far away, and one side is zoomed up super close. That’s the side no one wants to look at. You can see your PORES. Yuck!
Healthy community has two sides as well. The mirror that looks at you as a whole person. My sisters know my heart. They trust the God in me and I trust the God in them. They know I want sleep so I’m not tired and can serve and love the best that I can in the morning.
But because they see greatness in me, and want everyone else to see it as well, they call out the little things. The things you’ll only see in a close up mirror. The yucky things. The things that get in the way of people seeing my heart.
Perception is reality.
Community can be messy.
Little things can mask your heart.
My sisters call me into greatness.
And they love me where I’m at.
But they won’t let me stay there.
You can’t change the world unless you’ve first been changed yourself. And I’m so thankful for sisters that care about the little things in me, so that big and little, I can come into the identity God has for me.
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things out of us.
You make me new, You are making me new.
Below is V Squad’s final debrief video. (It’s weird typing that,
because V comes right before W, which means OUR SQUAD
is the next squad to FINISH THE RACE.) Anyway, it’s just a
glimpse at some of the change that God does in the life of a
World Racer.
Awesome Steph! I love the honesty and humility! Daddy’s soo proud of You!!1
Steph, this is great. I’m glad that your sisters are bringing you into greatness, and that you’re willing to let them take you there! Also love the illustration about the double-sided mirror. You’re an amazing woman and I’m so pumped to see what God has for you as you continue to follow him!
I am so glad that God does not look on the outword things of man, but looks at our heart. He always knows our motives and we are never misunderstood.