This blog is for Racers – if you are on the field, or leaving soon, or someone looking into the race and considering all the different parts of it…let me tell you now, travel days are gonna happen. And more than 11 times. There are plenty of months where you switch cities halfway through, or have debriefs in different locations. If you are someone that struggles with change like myself, I have learned over the last 5 months on the field what helps me get through travel days and to enjoy them.
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Start your day off with JESUS. Yes, there are going to be mornings where you have to wake up at 3 AM, or 1 AM, or travel days where you may not sleep at all the night before. The days are long and oftentimes uncomfortable. I 10/10 recommend that you take at least a few minutes before the hectic-ness of the day sets in to be still with your Lord and allow Him to fill you up and give you grace and mercy for the day. Sometimes you aren’t able to do this. In that case, I recommend putting on a podcast, sermon, or a few worship songs at the beginning of your travels. Again, this is just to align your heart with the Lord’s and genuinely just have Him fill you up for the day. These are the days I find myself the most empty, and I’ve realized it’s because they are some of the MOST hectic days of the race, and to jump into a day like that without Jesus time is just not great for my mental health.
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Be open-minded and recognize that it’s a slow process. It’s not always slow, but more often than not when you are traveling in a group of 30+ people…it’s slow. Border crossings take a hot minute, and usually all of the minutes are hot. A lot of uncomfortable buses, seats, and temperatures, but once you come to terms with it…it’s not so bad. Allow grace to the people next to you and grace to yourself. It can honestly be fun!
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Chocolate – this might just be a me thing. It’s kind of a gift of grace to myself. But if you’re someone that struggles with change, or gets really in their own head about ministry and moving on to new things…the race is going to be hard for you. It has been for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I have a hard time saying goodbye, and when you start building relationships just to be ripped away from them 28 days later, it really messes with your head. It makes me sad, makes me question if I should stay in that country (happens in almost every country for me lol), and I begin to internally process how difficult the race is because believe it or not, travel days are sometimes the days I have the most time to process. So I make sure I buy a snack in advance. For me…it’s a chocolate bar. I love trying new things, but on my travel days I like to have the comfort of a piece of chocolate when I’m gettin in my feels. If your snack is chips or something else, by all means get your comfort snack and just let the feels happen lol.
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Don’t lose your headphones. Just don’t. If you forget to put headphones in your daypack on travel day, all I can say is I’m sorry and best of luck.
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Shower and pack completely the night before! This is just a preference thing for me, but I have seen it work best this way the last 5 months! It makes it a lot less stressful to get out the door in the morning if all you have to do is wake up, brush your teeth, and go! And you’d think this is common sense, but honestly so many people wait till the morning to pack and maybe it works for them but it stresses me out haha.
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Choose patience, mercy, kindness, and JOY! These are all choices. They are active decisions you need to make over and over. There will be problems at border crossings, there will be times where you are waiting for hours for passports to be correctly stamped or fixed. Sometimes people are on edge. What we have been told over and over is to choose joy and be the light that sparks other people to have joy and patience and all that as well. It just makes it a whole lot better when you choose to have a good time. 🙂
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Wear socks. You gotta walk a lot and be cramped in tight buses or cold on airplanes and socks are just a move.
These are just some active ways to make travel days better in my opinion. Thought I’d try something different to blog about 🙂
