Posted in General Posts by Nathan and Carrie Chance on 10/26/2010
Wow has it been a seriously long/crazy week! I'm sure you have all
heard or figured out by now that Carrie and I won't be joining you on
the Race next year. First of all, we really want to apologize to any
and all of you that we didn't have a chance to say good-bye to. We
came down to the lodge to give out hugs but it just kind of turned out
to be an awkward time for good-byes b/c you were all heading out into
the woods! So we just wanted to take this opportunity to share with
you before our blog gets shut down and we don't have access to you guys
via the blogs any more.
So to start off, we want to tell you how incredibly much we miss all of
you. It really is quite unbelievable how close we grew to you all over
the course of like 4 days! But we also wanted to share with you guys
what all we were going through with the Race and all. So I guess
basically we just really had a hard time at training camp, not with any
of you guys at all, but we really just didn't feel at peace about
going. Training camp was really a roller coaster ride for the both of
us and when it came down to commitment time, we just weren't quite
there. And we didn't feel like it was fair for us to not be totally
committed, nor was it fair to you guys or the WR for us to not be
totally committed. So we didn't commit. And honestly we left camp
Wednesday night completely broken. We went on to Atlanta mostly bc we
didn't really want to go back home and we had already reserved a hotel
for Sunday night in Atlanta for our anniversary so we just decided to
go on to ATL and we pretty much cried the whole way there. We
literally really missed all of T-Squad by the time we hit the
interstate. And we were really down for the next couple of days about
all of it. We were frustrated because since this past June we had all
of 2011 planned out, ya know we'd be going a mission trip all year. So
that didn't work out and we were hurt and frustrated and confused and
who all knows what else. Well we have finally made it back home and we
are becoming more and more at peace with our decision. But we are also
realizing more and more how deeply we connected with all of you.
Honestly since we have been married we haven't really been able to plug
into a community of believers our age that are crazy and fun and love
Jesus (or you could read that as 'we have no friends' haha). But
seriously we are realizing how much we have really missed that kind of
community and we so had it with all of you and we are so missing it!
You guys all have such beautiful hearts and intriguing personalities
and we know God is going to do big things next year with all of you.
We are going to be reading all of your blogs on a regular basis and
hope to keep contact with you as you all are on the race. For real for
real for real if you ever come through Clarksville please come see us
and stay with us and let us feed you (Carrie is quite the chef). We
will be praying for you and are really looking forward to seeing and
reading how God is going to use you!
If there is anything we can do to help any of you in any way please let
us know! We have a blog that we update fairly recently with going ons
in the Chance household, so if you are interested in keeping up with us
at all you can find it here: http://nathanandcorinne.blogspot.com/.
So bottom line you guys all are awesome, we really believe in what you
all are doing, we totally miss you all and we will be praying for you!
Look at the nations and watch, and be utterly amazed. For I am going
to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you
were told.
- Habakkuk 1:5
Love and Peace,
Nathan and Carrie
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Posted in How We Were Called by Nathan and Carrie Chance on 10/12/2010
How Did We Get Ourselves Into This??!!!???
Haha, I think that's pretty much what we have been asking ourselves the past couple of weeks! Truthfully, leaving all we know and who we know behind for 11 months sometimes seems like such a daunting task. It's hard to let go of the plans you have made and the money you have saved up and the goals you had for the next year, to basically put everything you are doing or were going to do on hold. And honestly we sometimes find ourselves right there, thinking "How did we get ourselves into this?? Why couldn't God have called somebody else? Why us?" And to be even more honest, we were getting pretty comfortable, getting "ahead" as far as worldly thinking goes, well on our way to a fairly nice, comfortable home for our future children in a safe neighborhood. Now that for sure isn't to say that we haven't been very blessed and that we aren't grateful for all that our families and friends have done for us. But I guess what's most disturbing is that we had grown comfortable in our spiritual lives with just doing enough, just reading enough of the Bible, praying just enough together, giving just enough of our time and money and lives away to at least feel like we were truly loving God above anything or anybody else in this world, so we could for the most part feel like we were living in total abandon for the glory of God's kingdom without actually living in total abandon for God's kingdom. So that's where God met us. And here we are, a couple of months later gearing up for training camp and very soon to be leaving the country for 11 months! So how exactly did we get ourselves into this?? Let's start at the beginning, when God very first laid this journey on our hearts.
We both have a best friend going on the Race, same route and everything (Charles McCall & Sarah Branscom). We very first heard about the World Race from them, more or less in passing, kinda like "Hey have you heard about this thing called the World Race? Ya, that sounds pretty cool." And we really didn't get any further than that with it until one day we got a phone call from Charles letting us know that he was actually going to apply to go on the World Race and for us to be praying for him. We hung up with him and got another phone call about 15 minutes later from Sarah pretty much informing us of the exact same thing (neither Charles or Sarah knew at the time that the other one was applying for the Race).
So a week or so later we go on vacation with Carrie's parents to Florida and while we were there Carrie got on the World Race website to see more about it and exactly what our two friends would be doing out of the country for a year. She started reading some blogs of current racers and then started sharing some of the stuff with me and then she came across the f.a.q. page and our question was answered for us: Can married couples go on the race? Of course! Our immediate thought was "Man, that sounds awesome! We would really love be able to do something like that!" followed immediately by "Yea but there's no way we could ever do that!" followed by a few moments of us staring at each other and then "Well, why couldn't we?"
So on the way back to good ole' Tennessee, we talked a little about what it would be like to go on the World Race, how we would pay for it, what some other logistical stuff would look like, what our family and friends would say and think, and could we really possibly do something like this? So we talked a while about it on the way back home, and kind of left it at "Well it really does sound awesome and we would both love to go and share the Gospel in this way, but really we just can't go do it." About two or three weeks later, we pretty much just confessed to one another that we really hadn't been able to get the World Race off of our minds and that we both really felt like God was calling us to it. So we spent the next week or two in prayer, and then we talked to our families about it and informed them that we felt like God was laying this on our hearts and that we had decided to apply for the trip. And we did. And we were accepted. And we were excited. And time passed and training camp drew closer and closer, and we got our insurance and we got our shots and we realized we were really actually going to do this thing. And then we were just plain scared.
Scared of what a year spent just Carrie and Nathan and God would look like. Scared of being changed. Scared of "giving up" our money and a year of our lives. Scared of leaving our lives that were built around what is safe and what is comfortable. Scared of what are family and friends would really think and how they all would react when they found out we were leaving in a year. Scared of all we would miss out on while we were gone. Really just scared to truly, honestly, openly, and whole-heartedly submit our lives, our love, our relationship, our possessions, our everything to our Creator, and definitely scared of what it's gonna be like to not live for ourselves anymore.
But one thing we have found through this struggle of wanting to serve God completely but still wanting to serve our worldly desires is that we really aren't 'giving up' anything. We aren't giving up or losing the money we will spend to go on this trip. We aren't giving up or losing a year of our lives. We aren't giving up or losing anything, we are gaining everything! We are gaining the freedom in Christ to no longer live for worldly pleasures, safety, or comforts. We are gaining the freedom in Christ to live and work for the only thing in this world that will ever matter: His glory!
Of course you don't have to go on a mission trip or go to seminary or teach a Sunday school class or sell your house, move into a shack, and give all the money to the poor or volunteer at the community kitchen every Saturday morning to live in abandon for His kingdom, to live every day for nothing less than God's glory. But we feel like God has told us to Go! and share His Gospel with the nations, to love all of those that our world has decided are not worth loving, and that's what we are trying to do!
Make no mistake, we are definitely a little anxious. We are for sure getting really excited, but still a little anxious. I guess we see it as this: God says to make disciples of all nations, so we are going to. God says to serve the least, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the lonely, and give hope to the hopeless (Matthew 25) and we certainly plan to. God says to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and man, that's all we are trying to do!
Please please continue to pray for us! Please pray that God alone would be glorified in our marriage and that we would not settle for safety and comfort over the freedom for living in complete abandon for Christ's kingdom.
Love and Peace
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