I love to read, but the line in the title… that is from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens- if it went over your head, lol
… no, I haven’t read it either- but that name is all I can think about in naming this blog.
Training Camp. It is going to be so hard to put all of the emotion, the lack of sleep, the camaraderie, the hardships, the sweets kisses from God, the mental drain, the physical drain… everything into sufficient words to describe all the God had going on this past week. This quote pretty much sums it up though. Training Camp was the BEST week in my life! It was also the HARDEST. No ifs, ands, or buts.
**If anyone would like to meet up and have me talk about training camp, I would absolutely Love to!!**
I went into training camp with an expectation of how physically hard it was going to be. I’m not going to give anything about what we did away, in case a future Racer is reading this blog, but I will say it was physically hard- and I was a bit prepared for it. The spiritual/mental difficulty is what was the hardest for me.
God pretty much held up a mirror to my face the ENTIRE week at training camp. It was not too appealing. He showed my stubborness, my pride, my bossiness, my need for control, He showed me things in my life that I was holding on to: things, basically, I needed to LET GO.
‘Let It Go’ kinda seemed to be a theme for me. I had a couple of squadmates say it to me, God said it to me a lot about my need to know everything and holding onto things of the past, and I’ll give you one guess as to what song was played at pretty much EVERY dance party!!
… yup, Frozen’s “Let It Go”
I really, really want to share one totally awesome thing that happened: it still gives me goosebumps- such an obvious presence of the Lord. One time, when our squad was meeting, we did an exercise on listening for the Spirit of God. Half of our squad had their eyes shut and the other half went up and put their hand on someone with their eyes closed. I put my hand on the shoulder of one of my squadmates, and after a couple minutes of silence, he started praying about control. He said that God just wants me to trust/depend on Him. God’s got this, I need to let it go and give it all to Him. Haha, my squadmate said that he really just wanted to start belting out “Let It Go”.
Oh, now I have to say another thing….
…. this is kinda a little spoiler, so future Racers- look away! 🙂
At one point we split into groups and did a team building activity. This activity was that we all just survived a plane crash and we had to all make it from where we were- point A- to a different point B. The catch? We all had, interesting, injuries. Some girls lost a leg and arm, some were unconscious, some blind, some couldn’t talk, some had the a plague and couldn’t touch others… and me? Well, I had no arms. Having no arms made it so hard for me. I couldn’t just pick up an unconscious person, I couldn’t reach out and steady a legless person, I couldn’t lead our blind person– I was useless. (that is how I felt) I didn’t have control of my body, the situation, and I was frustrated.
And now, God’s not done working on me in this area! I come home from training camp with Poison Ivy!! I am the only one of the 42 people on our squad. And guess what?!
It is on my right arm! I cannot use my arm: my family wants me to make sure that I don’t touch them, I can’t use that arm in the normal daily activities I do, and I CAN’T go to work until it’s healed! I am in the food service industry… it should be pretty apparent as to why I’m not allowed to work. It sucks that I cannot work, but it is just God showing who is in control.
So, World Race Training Camp 2014 for Ashley Albert, summed up:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”- but in ALL times, I need to learn to “Let It Go”!
<3 Ash
p.s. WE WON SQUAD WARS!!!!!! #GoBlue #LYeah
