Lately, I’ve been really missing home, my family, and my close friends. I’ve also found myself missing this past season of my life on the world race. Like, I find myself experiencing pain in my heart due to the love I have for N Squad (the people I traveled the world with). It’s not a bad pain nor am I missing them in an unhealthy way, but in a really genuine, “I just miss my people a lot sort of way.”
Anyway, what has helped me process and grieve this past season of life has been going through video clips of my time with N Squad. So, I decided to compile some of my favorites, write a script, and express my gratitude through this video.
I’m also going to include the script here in my blog. My purpose is to walk in this new season at my best while also memorializing this past year which changed my life forever and for the better.
So without further adieu, here’s my thank you to N Squad…
How do you say thank you to people who have changed your life?
People you’ve traveled the world with?
People with whom you share countless memories of crowded buses, train rides, adrenaline rushes, coffee dates, shwarma runs, English classes, dance parties, jungle adventures… so many memories I can’t possibly list them all.
How do you communicate gratitude to those people?
How do you express yourself when the feelings you have seem to be too rich, too deep, too complex for words.
Like, you can spend all night (as I did) writing a script… organizing words, playing a kind of literary Tetris attempting to say just the right thing that will make other people understand how you feel about an amazing group of individuals
But no matter how hard you try, words just don’t seem to be enough.
Words fail
No creative combination of words seem to adequately describe the emotions that well up in my soul when I close my eyes and relive a memory from Ecuador, India, or Romania
I can’t “make” you understand the fullness of what I experienced this past year
But thankfully, there are 25 others who do understand
They understand, because they were there.
They walked alongside me in the streets of Colombia
They experienced what I experienced in Nepal
They saw, smelled, touched, tasted, heard, and felt what I did along the way
They sat through the church services, lifted their hands in worship, experimented with the street food, saw intense poverty and experienced the same brokenheartedness deep within. They walked hundreds of miles on the Camino, left their families for just under a year, stumbled through language barriers and poured out their hearts to people just like I did. My sacrifice was their sacrifice, and their’s, mine.
These are the people I don’t have to explain it to.
I don’t have to whip out my phone to show them pictures or videos to give them a mental reference to work off of.
They just… know.
And these are the people where “thank you” just doesn’t seem to cut it.
…Then again, they probably don’t need a thank you.
Because they understand.
They understand the depth of emotion, the confusion of transition, and the insufficiency of words to describe what they experienced.
They understand… well, they understand me.
And I understand them.
Because we’re friends
We’re community.
We’re N Squad
So N Squad
Though it feels wildly inadequate
Thank You
Thank you for being the chickens you are
Thank you for the laughs
The celebrations
The hunger for more…
More adventure
More conversation
More excellence
More justice
More effectiveness
More of Holy Spirit
and more of each other
Thank you for teaching me God cannot fit in a box
That love knows no limits
That every human is worthy of being seen, heard, valued, and cherished.
That relationships should be fought for
That there are people within the body of Christ who are FOR one another
and that community has the potential of being one of the sweetest tastes of heaven on earth
N Squad,
Let us not forget who we are
Let us not wander from the identity God has activated within us
For we are New men and women
We are His beloved
We are
free
Thank you N squad… for everything
Well said, and yet the ache of the inability to fully express what you’ve experienced comes through so clearly. I wonder if it’s because you are trying to describe the Divine, the literal essence of the Kingdom. There are no human words for that, and that’s probably a good thing. Thankfully it can be experienced.
WOW Connor! This is so good….thank you for sharing these beautiful times with all of us. Love you!
Thank you, Connor, for sharing your journey with us! I almost feel like I have been with all of you just by reading the blogs and hearing tales of the journey through other World Racers. My prayer for you is to always share your most heartfelt experiences with others. You never know whose life you may change through the work of the Holy Spirit. Love, Nanny
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You have touched on the feelings beautifully “the Divine, the literal essence of the Kingdom”. Well said James (Makayla’s Dad)!