What do you mean there is no schedule for the week? How am I supposed to know what is coming next?
Wait, you really want me to get up and pack up my tent in the rain?
You want me to share my heart and possibly cry in front of people I just met?
These are some of the questions that went through my head the first two days of training camp when it didn’t really start how I expected. I had expected nice sunny Georgia, a fun time getting to know my squad and talks about what to expect on the World Race. I had expected God to show up and do some cool things with our squad and good worship time. Basically, I wanted a week of sunshine, laughter, new friends and good God time. Struggle was nowhere on my agenda.
Everything at training camp has a purpose and some events represent real World Race possibilities and not all of it is comfortable. Waking up morning number one to rain, packing everything up and going on a hike to help you realize how heavy your pack really is. Not comfortable. Spending the first four days cold because it wasn’t as sunny as I thought it would be. Not comfortable. Sharing a tent and sleeping bag with someone night two because half of our bags got “lost” by the airline in one of our exercises. Not comfortable. Sharing my heart with people I just met, and letting tears flow freely. Not comfortable.
The first couple days of my training camp were met with some disappointment when my expectations weren’t met. I was frustrated and told God that this isn’t what I expected. This wasn’t fun. So God met me where I was. One of our next sessions was all about our expectations of the World Race. What we expected our living situations to look like, our team, our ministry for the month, the food, and communication with friends and family back home. For me this was probably one of the best practical lessons of the week. I won’t try to recap the whole session but here are a few things that came from it.
You can expect it to be difficult.
You can expect God to show up.
Lay down what you expect so that God can do what He wants.
So I did.
I gave up my expectations of comfort and ease and dove in and got messy. Training camp became a week where I laughed harder, cried harder, and danced harder than I have before. It became a week of letting God do a work in my heart that was long overdue.
In just a month I head back to Atlanta to being my 11 month World Race journey. I am EXPECTING God to show up. I am EXPECTING Him to do great things. But my prayer over the next month and the 11 months that follow is that I don’t let my expectations cloud what God wants to do.
