Bread Crumbs

“Oh! So once you graduate where are you headed?”

High school senior me sighed internally. “Well, I’m not sure yet… I haven’t picked out a college. Or a major.”

Two years later and I did end up making it to a community college… To earn a 2-year degree, and so I found myself faced with the same questions as before.

“Where are you headed after you graduate?” “What do you want to do with your life?” “Where are you transferring?” “What’s your major?”

And yet, my answer was the same. “I’m not sure yet.”

The uncertainty of the future can rattle some. For someone who enjoys structure and plans, you would think not having my life planned out would be terribly stressful. Oddly enough, I’ve never found my future’s open end as something to fret over. Whatever happens will happen. I’ll take the opportunities I’ve been given when they come around. And that’s basically what my life has consisted of the past two years. Accepting random job offers and trying new things. One thing was certain: my future was completely uncertain, and I was really enjoying it. My indecisive nature was thriving under a lack of big commitments. 

And while I hope I can say I’ve grown enough in two years to say that I’ve taught myself how to be more assertive, the suggestion of going on the World Race secretly scared me.

9 months? 11 months? Out of the country? With a backpack? With no one I know? And it costs WHAT?! It sounded cool, it really did. I love to travel, and I can pack light, and I’m always up for a good challenge. Living without all the luxuries of first-world life and taking on days as a local sounded like something I had always wanted to try… But now that I was presented with an actual offer, was I going to take it?

Someone could have said to me, “pshh, you won’t do it,” and spite, my primary motivator, would have made me apply immediately. But I knew that something this big had to be driven by something bigger. I needed other people’s opinions on this, including God’s. This trip was not some Bear Grylls or Naked and Afraid weekend. This was missionary work. Dirty, genuine, tough, rewarding, kingdom-growing work.

I contacted an old friend, who had already completed WR, whose sister was going on the WR, and whose mother had initially placed the idea in my mind. We sat in hammock chairs at our local coffee shop, and I listened intently to what he had to say. Up until that point, I had really considered going to be a bit of a joke. I wasn’t going to do it. But listening to him was the start of many tiny nuggets that made me think, “I’m gonna do this.” 

So I applied. Even if I wasn’t going to be accepted, I still could have said that I at least applied. But, here I am, so it turns out they thought my application was good enough to admit. 

Yet even after I heard of my acceptance, which I definitely celebrated, I still had my doubts. I could still back out. I still had to officially commit. But the one, most important question remained: did God want me to do this? My friends could encourage me every moment, my family could support me, the place in life I found myself in was pretty freaking ideal… but did God want me to do it?

I wanted a fiery answer. I wanted a clear “YES! GO!” I wanted loud approval. I wanted without any doubt in my mind to know that God was totally on board with this idea. But I should know better. God doesn’t yell. He waits for us to shut up so he can whisper. 

“How do I know if this is what the Lord is calling me to?” I asked a WR correspondent. “It’s not like he’s said ‘no,’ but I haven’t heard thunderous approval.” She understood and replied, “sometimes God just leaves us little bread crumbs. We can’t expect to have the whole loaf right now. If you notice a trail of crumbs, follow it.” And for some reason, when she said that, it all made sense. I had noticed many crumbs.

So, after such a long introduction, my why: Why am I doing this? Why am I leaving my friends and family and the multiple jobs that I love to go live out of a backpack with random people in random places that definitely hold potential for danger? Because that’s where the bread crumbs are. I’d like to say that once I put in my monetary deposit that secured my spot in the Race, God just started fist pumping the air in celebration and grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Yes! I was waiting for you to follow the trail! Here’s the end! Have this loaf of bread!” But alas, I have yet to receive anything more than more crumbs, which means that I’m still on the trail. 

Do I think I’ll end up finding that affirming loaf of bread at the end of some rainbow in Ecuador? No, I don’t. But I think that once I board that plane to take me back to America at the end of 2022, I’ll notice just how many bread crumbs I’ve collected, and noticed that while my uncertainty was ever-present, my faith kept me on the trail long enough to realize that this was the path that I was supposed to take, and I’ll have enough bread crumbs to produce five loaves, not just one.