World Race Training Camp: A Yes Redefined
“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirit of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.” – e.e. cummings
I learned a lot about the word yes at training camp. It’s a small word. Only three letters long. It rolls off the tongue pretty easily and often absentmindedly. Sometimes when I use it I mean it. And sometimes when I use it I don’t. It is a word that I am sometimes hesitant to give away but I am almost always eager to receive.
Yes.
World Race training camp opened my eyes to all of the yeses that I have spent so much of my twenty-six years looking for…
From my parents. My siblings. My teachers. My friends.
Yes, you’ve made the team.
Yes, you’ve been accepted to college.
Yes, we’d love to offer you the job.
It’s a word of approval, affirmation, attention; achievement.
It’s a word that I all too often find myself performing for, as I consistently try to be nicer, kinder, funnier, wilder, prettier, smarter, stronger, etc. in hopes that I might once again be stamped approved.
And so there I was. In the chaos of camp. Cold, smelly, tired, and hungry. Standing beneath a white circus tent looking again for yeses from my new friends and waiting for my stamp of approval from the 2016 World Race Expedition Leadership Team. When, instead of being given a yes. I was asked to give a yes. First to God and then to my squad.
I was asked to find every yes within me and return it to its rightful owner – the One to whom all yeses belong. The One who waits longingly; patiently for my yes every day. So, I did as I was asked and I began, somewhat reluctantly, to unload all of the yeses I had collected over the years. I began, less and less reluctantly, to let the Truth and Grace of the Lord seep deep into my core not unlike the rays of the South Georgia sun.
And the deeper I let His truth sink, the more I found myself humbled by how much of my life I had spent looking to get yeses instead of giving them away. Even more, I found myself sobered as I reflected on where and to whom I had given my very few yeses to. I watched myself say yes to fitting in. Yes to being good and doing right. Yes to idols like athletics and fun. Altogether, I saw myself saying yes to approval from others over, and over, and over again.
And as the rays of the sun burned hotter and the love of the Lord sounded louder a new awareness of the yes that I possess was born – an awareness that has since challenged me to do two things.
First, it has challenged me to cultivate a yes in my spirit that comes from the Lord – a yes that I am free to authentically and intentionally give away.
Second, it has challenged me to be more vigilant about where and to whom I am both giving my yeses to and looking for my yeses from.
So it was with this new and glorious awareness that I was able to gather alongside my thirty-something new brothers and sisters, beneath towering trees and falling leaves, for a ceremony in which we would have the privilege and honor of saying yes to each other. And it was with this new awareness that I looked into thirty-eight sets of eyes and gave away my yes.
Yes I will Love God first.
Yes I will Love you second.
Yes I will allow myself to be known by you.
Yes I will lay down my life for you.
And so it was that the first World Race Expedition Squad was formed by a string of yeses. To God. To each other. And to the world. Yes.
