I am about to be real vulnerable with you all.

A lot of times, I post blogs and pictures about the beautiful and God-ordained things on the race, but lots of times, I forget to share with you the more vulnerable and much less pretty times.

It is easy to share with you the more beautiful times, but it also is harder to share the uglier, more embarrassing times. And let me tell you, there are lots. I am learning that even through the uglier times of the race, God’s hand is in the middle of everything.

Lots of times, you don’t see pictures of us sleeping together in the same bed because there is not enough room, you don’t see us waking up to giant cockroaches crawling over us, you don’t see us running to the bathroom because of the food we ate and you don’t see us bear crawling through the Himalayan mountains to reach a village that just needs to experience the love of Jesus.

You also don’t see pictures of us picking lice out of each other’s heads … but you are about to.

This is vulnerable of me. It’s an embarrassing moment, but I’m going to share anyway because the World Race wouldn’t be complete without some lice bugs.

So throughout this adventure, I learned what it looks like to live in true community. I had friends who stayed up for hours helping me become lice-free, and I had friends who made the nasty situation a lot less nasty and embarrassing. We sang songs, we played games, we laughed until we cried and we fellowshipped with one another.

This is the World Race — the people around you, the church that God has ordained for you and the love of Christ that shines through these lovely girls who would do anything for you.

So I actually learned as well that God had planned out this lice fiasco all too perfectly. He reminded me that his hand is in every situation, every moment, the good ones and even the bad ones.

It wasn’t by chance that God spoke to me very clearly months ago at training camp and told me to chop my long hair off for his glory. It wasn’t by chance that right before walking out of the door for the last time, I did one last round and randomly grabbed a bottle of lice shampoo as if my pack wasn’t heavy enough already, and it wasn’t by chance that I was the only one with lice shampoo and the only one who got lice.

God has blessed me with some of the sweetest girls to grow in community with. It is an adventure, and it is a journey every day with them. They are the girls who God has ordained me to grow with, to share his Word with, to seek after him with and to be my professional lice detoxers. They are my family and my church.

God is good, and he is good in every situation — the frustrating ones, the exciting ones, the dreaded ones. God is so good.