Remember that time I totally wrote a blog about training camp right after I got back? Yea me neither. I kept putting writing this post for a variety of reasons but the main one being I didn’t know what I wanted to write about. A lot went down at TC. I learned a lot about myself, about my relationship with God, along with all of the team building and the practical tools for ministry. I could talk about TC for days so when I say I didn’t know what to write about what I really mean is that I didn’t know what to focus on. I didn’t want to just break it down by day and tell you about all the weird food we ate (yes, I ate crickets) or what I like to call the “bucket shower experience”, or the various porter potty adventures. There was a bigger story going on for me (and I think everyone) at training camp. When you are dropped in the middle of hot and humid Georgia with a bunch of strangers and intense (or in tents as it were) circumstances and proceed to have all manner of physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational experiences thrown at you, stuffs gonna go down. Not to say that it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time. Quite the opposite actually. Training camp was unlike anything I have ever been apart of before. If I had to sum up all that I learned the topic would be community and provision.
Throughout the process of preparing for the World Race not a lot has made me nervous. Changing places every month, weird food, sleeping on the ground, questionable showering situations, language barrier, none of it really has me shaking in my boots except for one thing: the money. The World Race was on my heart long before I applied. I knew it was something I wanted to do starting about 3.5 years ago right before graduating college. I had the whole thing planned out. I was going to apply for the race a year in advance so I would have plenty of time to fundraise. I kept a running list of fundraiser ideas on my phone. When the time finally came and I was accepted to the race I made sure I took as many hours as I could at work and would pick up freelance work whenever possible. Well all my best laid plans kind of got thrown out the window. Despite all of my efforts I still barely made the fundraising deadline to be able to even attend training camp.
Don’t get me wrong. I am so thankful for all of the support that I received. Raising $5,000 is no small feat and it would not have been possible without every single person who not only gave financially but who were also there encouraging me through the process. But being the person I am and having wanted to be fully funded the day I got accepted on the race it was a struggle for me to remain positive when I felt so far behind. I knew that this was what God was calling me to as the next step in my life. Therefore, He is going to provide for me but I was still getting really discouraged.
About three or four days into TC we split up as guys and girls. The guys went and hiked 12 miles of the Appalachian Trail and the girls stayed behind and talked about our feelings (I’m not bitter about it). To be fair at girls day we got skittles and chocolate so I guess it comes out even. Towards the end of girls day, right before our final session, we were sitting around talking about fundraising. We were swapping back and forth different things we had done. Tshirts, selling crafts, fundraising letters, phone calls, speaking at churches, and it felt like I had done everything that they had all done but with a much lower level of success. As I began expressing this frustration a girl on my squad turned to me and said:
“Well do you expect God to provide for you?”
Me: “Well I know He called me to do this so it’s going to happen…”
Girl: “No no, do you expect God to provide for YOU.”
That stopped me short in my tracks (not really I was sitting down). In that moment I was flooded with the realization that in spite of what I had been saying through the whole process I didn’t believe God was going to show up in my life. Even though in my mind I was stepping out in faith in all these different fundraising endeavors I had stopped expecting to be successful.
This revelation weighed heavily on me through the rest of training camp. The more I thought about it the more I realized this lack of belief in my life wasn’t just in the area of fundraising. Realizing that I didn’t expect God to provide me with friends, peace, stability, or really anything at all sent me into a small crisis of faith. If I didn’t believe any of these things was I even a Christian? Did I believe in God at all? Overthinking is a habit of mine. So through the rest of TC, as I was drowning in uncertainty (mostly of my own creation), I started being surrounded by other voices. The voices of my squad members.
Being vulnerable is not on my top ten list of favorite activities. Sharing is really not my thing. I have gotten really good at being “fake transparent” where I share just enough that people think I’m opening up when in actually I’m only giving the very surface information. Well, that attitude doesn’t really fly at training camp at all. One thing the WR leaders are very good at is structuring the time with your squad so that you pretty much have to break down walls and get to know each other on a deep level.
Through all of this mess of frustration about funding and feeling isolated and abandoned I was finally put in a place where I broke down and shared with the people around me. One of the sessions later on in the week was basically an hour of logistics. What vaccinations, passport photos, legal documents and such we needed and by when. It was also then that I found out that the $10,000 deadline was not at launch date (Oct. 2) but over two weeks sooner on Sept. 16. My eyes went wide and panicked and I could feel tears burning. That cut the amount of time I thought I had in half. If I wasn’t freaked out and frustrated before I certainly was now.
One thing about me is that even though I don’t like sharing sometimes my face does it for me. I have no poker face whatsoever and I have this habit of radiating my emotions. So when we walked out of that session one of my squad mates asked me:
“So how was that session for you?”
And proceed to tell me how she could feel the stress coming off me from two seats away. And that’s when the floodgates opened. We walked to lunch and I spilled everything to a group of my squad mates. My anger, frustration, everything that had I had tried and failed, the laundry list of dumb situations I had encountered, getting screwed over by roommates and insurance companies, all of it. Every single one of them gathered around me with sympathy and encouragement. They shared stories of similar frustrations and then all laid hands on and prayed for me. None of them chastised me for my lack of faith or told me I wasn’t trying hard enough.
Throughout the rest of TC I had multiple members of my squad come up and share verses and words of encouragement. All of them centered around Gods roll as provider and how I needed to only “be still”. I heard the phrase “be still” a lot at TC. I’m not a person who is good at being still. If I’m working less than 40hrs a week I don’t know what to do with myself. And how am I supposed to “be still” when I have all this fundraising to do? But over and over that phrase kept coming up in one form or another. Always “be still”, “surrender to Him”, “wait on the Lord”. None of these things come easily to me. Even when I am at the end of myself and my resources I still struggle to ask for help.
On the very last day of training camp we were sitting waiting for our very last session (all about the finer points of cleaning the campground and the applicable tools for ministry we would gain through that) and the same squad mate who had seen the stress radiating off me in the finances session and I were expressing our excitement to get on the road and eat non TC food. She specifically pointed out how she couldn’t wait to get Starbucks.
I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or the Lord or if I had finally gotten the value of vulnerability in that moment. I don’t know what compelled me to share because it is totally out of my nature but I found myself saying:
“Yea, starbucks sounds great but I’ll probably just stop at McDonalds or something because I have $11 to get me home for food and gas”.
Now I hadn’t strictly speaking asked for help. But admitting that I had a need that I myself was powerless to meet was pretty darn close. Asking for help makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I would rather wear icicles for shoes than ask for something that I need. But here I was admitting to someone who I had only known for 10 days that I needed something and was otherwise helpless.
After we finished cleaning our section of the grounds we gathered to be prayed over by our squad mentors and to take a final picture. Before all this though that same squad mate pulled me aside. She told me that some people on the squad wanted to bless me, handed me a bundle of cash, and told me to go get some Starbucks.
I was completely floored and speechless. All I could manage to do was thank her repeatedly and give lots of hugs. When I sat in my car and counted up the $147 they had given me I couldn’t stop myself from crying. For something as trivial as Starbucks my squad mates saw a need in me and felt the need to bless me and provide for that. Without them I probably wouldn’t have made it home or at the very least been hungry and drowsy the whole drive. When I think back to that moment where I was so at the end of myself, and through the community of believers I had just entered into, I am still floored. I look at that moment of out of the blue provision and see God seeking to start a new work in my life in that area.
In these weeks after training camp I must admit I have still gotten frustrated and discouraged. I look at where I stand with finances and I start to stress about all the work I should be doing and how I just need to push harder and do more and maybe the money will come in. But through all of that I still hear the words from my squad mates speaking life into me and believing for me when I couldn’t believe for myself:
“Be still”
