A lot of you are probably wondering what I’ve been doing since returning to the States. I’ll be splitting this story down into three parts, because it’s a lot for one blog post, and it can be split into three seasons, and I genuinely want to share it for people to read. To understand that I didn’t count all the costs when I left for the World Race, now nearly two years ago.
a year int he wilderness: pt I. (August 29, 2019-January , 2020)
The plane landed in Ft Lauderdale, Florida in the very early hours of the morning. We were here. We had arrived back to the States. I was feeling a million feelings as I waited to get through customs. To get my backpack. Say some very weary, tired, emotion-filled goodbyes to people who had not just been friends, but had lived alongside me for a year. From the beginning this squad wasn’t just a group I was traveling with. Even before meeting them at training camp in August of 2018, they were family. It was only fitting that we had decided our squad would be Ohana. We were never just O Squad. We were always family.
To me, the most difficult part of the World Race, by far, was coming home. It was the part I sometimes daydreamed about when I was gone. Returning to my friends, my family, my community. Seeing my friends on stage in the worship band. The long-awaited hugs. The faces at the airport that were familiar and oh, so missed for nearly a year.
But when the time came, I didn’t feel ready. Would my community back home even know me any more? Did they even really miss me? Were they ready for this new version of me I’d spend the last year building and dreaming with God?
Splitting from the squad is to date one of the most painful memories I have in my life. There was some missed communication between me and some close friends near the end. There were a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of pain. That pain would carry into the next six months of being home. It would lead to using people to try to cover my pain. It lead to drinking a lot of whiskey. A lot of missing my identity God had built up while I was gone.
Yesterday, a year ago, Ohana arrived at final debrief in Quito, Ecuador. It hardly seems like yesterday sometimes. Other days, it seems a lifetime ago. This is the post before the hard ones to follow. I’ll be writing more about the last year this week. But this is a prelude. This had to come first.
