At three o’clock in the afternoon on a brilliantly sunny day in Georgia, I’m climbing up a hill with a woman on my back and my eyes closed. That is not a metaphor.
World Race training camp had started five days earlier and now, in yet another simulation of a field scenario, Laura could no longer walk and was hanging on my back up an impossibly steep hill. We had a hundred yards of hot pavement to cross before we could consider our task complete, and I couldn’t see. Just feel the weight on my hips and shoulders, breathe, and trust that my teammates Claire and Laura were leading me true.
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Coming into training camp, I was terrified. Impossible scenarios ran through my head on the plane to Atlanta: My squadmates are going to hate me. Adventures in Missions will send me home. Everyone will know that I’m a fraud of a Christian. The past two years weighed heavily on my mind.
Two years is a long time to be searching for God. Even though in the moment in El Salvador, more than a year ago now, I knew the World Race was the next step- how could I be sure? Why wouldn’t the Lord reveal himself to me? How could I feel so bereft simultaneously with joy and excitement? Where was Jesus?
The Lord spoke to me at training camp, in the middle of nowhere north of Atlanta. It came as the fruit of a long and gradual road out of the desert. It came like sunrise in my soul.
One night at worship, swaying to the music alongside 300 other racers, I bowed my head. Why have you been gone for so long, Jesus? I asked. And suddenly, though the music was loud and the room was hot, I heard a still small voice in my mind: For such a time as this.
I barely had time to register the words that Mordecai said to Esther before the vision- or the closest thing to a vision I’ve ever had- began.
I am on a beach at sunset, looking out into the waves and the purple-and-gold streaked sky. Jesus is standing in the waves. My heart is beating so fast- it’s Jesus, it’s really him, standing there waiting for me in the glowing surf. I start running wildly across the beach and into the waves, arms wide, hair flying, and I jump into his arms. Safe. Loved. Fully in the presence of the Lord, after so long.
Let’s be clear, things like this don’t happen to me. I am a very normal Methodist who does not get visions of the Lord. But the vision stayed in my mind long after worship ended and I strung up my hammock to sleep. Our days were long and hot and dirty but every time we stopped for worship or teaching, I held on to the feeling of being in Jesus’s arms like it was a talisman that would soon lose its power. Certainly the Lord was leaving again, and soon. Certainly this was a camp high like every other.
On one of the last nights, the speaker had us read and pray over Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
And I heard the still-small voice of the Lord again, the second time in a week: Daughter, the burden of emptiness is heavier than the yoke I will place on you.
I was covered in red dirt, and I hadn’t showered in four days, and my hands were sticky with who-knows-what. But in that moment I knew that Jesus was looking on me and my snaggletoothed soul with delight, and I felt more beautiful than ever.
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Training camp is my ebenezer, my “stone of help,” that marks the end of my season in the desert. For months I’ve been looking for a reason for this journey- both in the desert and on the World Race.
Now, I think the purpose of my long dark night of the soul might have been to show me that conflating of delicious joy with the presence of the Lord isn’t always true. Sometimes the presence of the Lord is the voice inside you that says, “This is wrong, and I can’t stay silent.” Or it is the only thread of hope when a beautiful 3-year-old dies of an unexpected brain tumor. Or it is finally, after years of struggle, looking in the mirror and believing you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
The presence of the Lord can be justice rolling down like waters and a still-small voice in the silence after the storm. It is a pillar of fire in the night and a broken body on a cross and the deep, cold darkness of an Easter morning just before sunrise.
What I learned at training camp is the presence of Jesus brings joy, but is not simply the presence of joy. Sometimes it is carrying the weight on your back, eyes closed, counting every breath, the only way forward to listen carefully and trust. Because when Claire finally said, “Let go, you’re here,” standing tall was so much sweeter.
This is my wonderful team, Team Eshet Chayil (Hebrew for “women of valor”). Look for a blog about my team and the non-serious/logistical side of training camp coming soon!
