A few days ago, I talked to my friend Katie Cawthon, who did the race several years ago. For the last couple of months, I have felt like I’ve been in some kind of rut, and I wanted to talk it through with someone who might understand where I was coming from.
I sent her a message asking if she had ever struggled with wanting to go home and how to continue pushing forward. She asked a lot of questions about what was going on. Between COVID and quarantining, team changes, role changes, country and time zone changes, holidays away from home, and all of the personal work the Lord is doing in me, I realized I had found myself stuck.
I’ve been very frustrated with feeling like we haven’t been able to do much ministry in the way I was expecting ministry to look like on the race. Quarantining just the few times we’ve had to has made it seem like we’ve taken a back seat to ministry. Sometimes our interaction with people is limited. Sometimes it’s mostly manual labor. Sometimes it’s making ministry happen in ways we didn’t expect. Since arriving in South Africa, I’ve noticed a lot of my frustration with this and all of the change that has happened has effected me more than I would like to admit.
The most interesting part of all of it is the new roles I have been given in this season of the race. While struggling with frustration, change, and God’s purpose with it all, I was asked to accept the role of intercessor/celebration coordinator. As an intercessor, our role is to basically be a prayer warrior. To partner with God in how He is moving and respond. To be intentional about interceding with prayer through thanksgiving and worship. As celebration coordinator, my role is to see and look for opportunities to celebrate the ways in which God is working. To celebrate the little victories and the big ones. To recognize and bring a little more joy and fun to the squad.
After talking to Katie about these roles I had been placed in, she sends me this article that she happened to come across the next day. It’s called “Celebration is a Spiritual Discipline,” and it completely began to change my thoughts on my roles during this season. In the article it quotes, “Joy is a spiritual discipline. We as a people are much more inclined toward negativity and cynicism. We don’t find it easy or natural to pursue joy. And that’s why God in His Word actually command us to celebrate. We come by a Gospel worth celebrating before a celebrating king. We need to get down to the serious business of joy. We must wrestle for our blessing. We must fight for our joy.”
In this season of whatever this “rut” is that I have found myself in, I don’t find it any coincidence that these are the roles I have been placed in. Roles that focus on prayer and thanksgiving and joy in a season where that has seemed so difficult to find. In the last few days, even when it has been hard, I am looking to find little ways to celebrate and ways to be thankful. As we go into a new year and into this new season, I am learning to fight for joy.
First time standing in the Indian Ocean!
