I have been on the world race for one week now, and I don’t know how to accurately sum up all this week had in store for me. Challenging,  joyful, sad, refreshing, hard, refining, draining, exciting. There is such a sweetness in this season while it’s still growing and stretching me in uncomfortable ways, but it’s special nonetheless. Isaiah 43:16-19 says,

“This is what the Lord says—

    he who made a way through the sea,

    a path through the mighty waters,

who drew out the chariots and horses,

    the army and reinforcements together,

and they lay there, never to rise again,

    extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

“Forget the former things;

    do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.”

I have always found this passage interesting because it is telling all these incredible things the Lord has done for His people, but He says forget about these things. Forget about these miracles, these incredible displays of God’s love, and how far He has gone for His children. The truth is, sometimes we get so caught up in the ways God has worked in the past, that we are blind to the blessings He has for us in the future. I have definitely landed in that mindset recently because I am so so grateful for what the last season was for me. I absolutely adored high school, especially my senior year. I know no one’s life is perfect, but mine was pretty close for a while. My heart and soul were perfectly content with the people I was surrounded by and the ways I got to spend my time. And then one by one, all of these things that added up to my pretty much perfect life started to fall apart. High school ended, which I thought I would be ready for but I just wasn’t. My friendships went from 10 minutes away to a few hours of distance. My parents started to take a different role in my life as their ‘parenting duties’ began to change. And all the sudden, life as I knew it was gone, and that was that. Ready or not, it was time for the World Race, which in every way was the thing I desired and yearned for and wanted, but the loss of the season prior to the Race got pretty dark for me, and I didn’t really want it anymore. I wanted a lot of things, but all the endings, and therefore the race, weren’t those things.

But here I am, and I almost feel like God is grabbing me by the shoulders and screaming at me to let go because yes, last year was sweet but so is this year! He’s doing a new thing! But if I keep dwelling on the goodness of the past I’m going to miss the goodness of the present, which is exactly what I think this passage is warning the Israelites about. God was good to them, He might as well have moved mountains for them, but He wasn’t done! And He’s not done for me either. I am held and beloved to the King, and this year is a gift that He has handpicked just for me and where I am in life right now.

So as I process that in my own life, I dare you to do the same. Don’t let the past block your blessings. Dare God to work in new ways, to jump out of the box you might have put him in. He wants to do a new thing, in my life but also in yours. And as I enter week 2 of the Race, my heart is to remember God’s desires for His children and to become more tuned into his voice and presence.