I can't believe in less than 48 hours I'll be back on US soil. What?! A lot of the conversations I've had with my team this week have been about looking back and realizing it was nothing like they thought it would be. The reality is that it's been a lot harder than they expected. You expect cute pictures with kids (see picture below), delicious new foods, and beautiful views. While this is definitely a part of mission-life, it's only a fraction of it.
The World Race is everything and nothing like you expect it to be. The hard thing about expectations is you never think you have them...but then you get disappointed and frustrated and you have no idea why. For some reason we think if we travel or go sign up for a mission trip, things just fall into place and it's one long high. I had that expectation before my own race without even realizing it. I thought I would be experiencing the highs of living in Christian community and serving in other countries. My year on the race ended up being the hardest, most difficult year of my life. But it was so, so good.
What I've realized is that my definition of "good" vastly changed over the past year of my life. I used to think a "good year" consisted of anxiety-free months, finding success in what I'm doing, and being happy all the time. If I'm honest, my year on the World Race was mainly filled with failure, pain, anger, frustration, and confusion. That is what my current teammates are starting to realize. We all came into this thinking that because we are missionaries this life would be fun and easy and perfect.
I've learned again and again that that's not the way the Lord works. His plan is often a mess...but a beautiful mess. A couple months ago, as I was preparing to be a team leader, I was subconsciously creating all these expectations. One of those was that I would be so in love with God that I couldn't help but love my teammates. I thought that I would get to show them how good it feels to be in close relationship with God.
However, this season has been the most heartbreaking season I've walked through with the Lord. I don't understand what God's doing in my heart, and for a while I had no idea how to be a leader with that internal pain. God has shown me that He wants me to let others be a witness to what He's doing in my heart. Even if that means I just let my heart bleed in front of my team. They don't get to see me falling so deeply in love with God that I see everything through rose-colored glasses. But they do get to see that even in the most heartbreaking pain God can be trusted, even there God is present, even there God is good... My plan was showing them how good life gets when you have God. God's plan was showing them how good He is even when everything in you hurts. Messy, painful, but beautiful.
In the same way, my teammates have realized that living in Christian community isn’t what they expected. If you haven’t had a chance to live in community, then you might not realize how many preferences you have. What time do you like to go to bed, when do you like to wake up, what kinds of food do you like to eat, how do you spend your money, are you an introvert or extrovert, do you take sarcasm well? As you can imagine, conflict comes up, people don’t get along, you get tired and snap at each other. My World Race experience shattered my expectations of living in community. It is a daily struggle to love others when it is hard, to choose to show up, to fight for unity. Even though it wasn’t at all what I expected, the Lord was all the while showing me how to love unconditionally, how to pursue people, how to put other’s preferences above my own. He was teaching me how to be more like Him, and that's what He has done with this squad.
I don't think we always know what our expectations are until we're already disappointed. Sometimes it's impossible not to have expectations. However, I think expectations become dangerous when it turns into entitlement. When hoping turns into "it should be this way..." or "it's unfair that they asked us to do this..." then we're in trouble. When expectations lead to disappointment, that is the perfect time to sit down and be humble. If we truly believe God is good all the time, that He is in sovereign control, and that He loves us, then we should trust Him no matter how our expectations play out. This truth is a lot easier to say than to actually believe. But as we start to sacrifice our understanding and our expectations, then our definition of good slowly starts to align with God's. That's when you can have joy in the middle of pain. That's when you can choose to be thankful when you don't get what you asked for. That's when you can actually say "let your will be done, not mine" and actually mean it.
Life as a missionary, a corporate employee, a student and everywhere in between is a mess. It becomes beautiful when you choose God's definition of goodness, when you choose His perspective. It's not easy, it's not always fun, but it's so worth it. It's a beautiful mess.
