Photo Cred: Josh Stoneman
As I sit down on the couch in my warm, well-lit home, with running water & a soft bed readily available, with a fridge full of food & a real toilet, the muffled sounds of Food Network play from the TV in the background and I’m torn between breathing out a sigh of relief and a sigh of longing for the less comfortable.
The past couple weeks of my life have been beautifully outrageous & fortunately uncomfortable. And I say fortunately uncomfortable because it is a blessing to be tested, one doesn’t learn perseverance & endurance at ease in Zion. Pottery has to be fired in the kiln to be made useful, branches must be pruned to bear fruit, marble must be chiseled away at to be what the sculptor intends. Discomfort is an honor, for through it the Lord is preparing us to live out the destiny He invented us for.
I boarded a plane to Atlanta, Georgia on May 21st, uncomfortable. I was apprehensive, nervous, excited, prematurely homesick before I even departed, genuinely happy & anxious under the weight of all the conflicting emotions. I was on the cusp of something I had only been able to daydream about for the past year or so. The moment you experience in reality the thing you’ve imagined for so long is super surreal. It still felt like a dream when I stumbled off the bus at training camp in Gainesville, praying silently & mentally rehearsing how to make a good impression on all these endearing strangers who I soon discovered were actually my brothers & sisters. The ten days that followed our arrival were days of hardship, love, tears, joy, repentance, revelation, worship, smiles, prayer, yawns, teaching, sharing, forgiveness, studying, dancing, creativity, grace, community, honesty, sweat (lots of sweat!), laughs, fruitful conversation, bucket showers, bugs, sleeping on the ground, teamwork, attitude adjustments, cravings, & much more.
From that list you can gather that training camp was just…everything.
A short season of pruning & watering us young trees, to be continued.
A whirlwind of physical, emotional, & spiritual challenges.
At the end of camp, we were given a survey to do & one of the questions prompted us to sum up our experience at training camp in 11 words or less, I wrote: “Ten days of mountains and valleys, all for God’s glory.” And that’s what it was: going from the Valley of Soul-Crushing Conviction to Mount Elation to the Valley of Perplexity to the Valley of Frustration to Mount Freedom in the span of an hour, hahahaha, but all for the glory of God! All so that we could be prepared & fit to run the race set before us (Hebrews 12:1). All for the furtherance of the Kingdom.
Camp was difficult. It was challenging for somebody who refers to themselves as a social armadillo (lol) to navigate a situation constantly surrounded by dozens of people, but I loved it, because I love to grow. And the ease with which I functioned in that setting really displayed to me how far the Lord has brought me out of being anti-social.
It was a safe place to come out of the carnal safe-zone we build around our own hearts brick-by-brick. Yeah we choose different materials (sensitivity, bitterness, denial, indifference), but we all use these fleshly weapons to keep a safe distance from others & God without even knowing it, & we need to instead abolish the barriers & press in to His presence consistently. We were encouraged to do that.
It encouraged reckless abandonment. Physically we had no choice but to abandon luxuries, but it was up to us if we were going to surrender to the Lord internally, it was up to us to relinquish control & just trust Him, & I found myself hoping often that we’d all choose internal abandonment, that our soul’s greatest indulgence would be Jesus.
It was an amazing experience I never knew I needed, & I think that’s the best explanation I can provide right now. I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to condense all that happened in me at training camp, but through those ten days every aspect of my life was touched upon by the Holy Spirit, even things I haven’t thought about for years & I think that exceeds a single blog post. Some more processing is also needed seeing as all that took place is still a wonderful incoherent jumble of victories & joys in my head & heart. All I know is as difficult & stretching as training camp was, it was equally as beneficial & liberating, if we allowed the Lord to work the way He wanted to through it. I came out of my shell, I worked through some stuff, I did things that scared me, I listened to the Lord, I loved people I just met. It was fun, it was awesome, it was bittersweet. It was the manifestation of the beautiful paradox within tears of joy. It was just good. And not just good like a dismissive “I’m doing good” or “that movie was good”, good like the goodness of God good, like He split the Red Sea good, or He will never leave me good, or singing “Oh Happy Day” at the top of your lungs good. God is good, & in that statement lies our apprehension, skepticism, anxiety & whatever else, all being redeemed & engulfed by His faithfulness when we step out in obedience. His goodness doesn’t mean that we’re deserving or perfect, but that He is & by His grace we’re going to #dothething.
On the last night of camp I sat on a roadside marvelling at the fireflies, astounded anew at God’s creation, praising His genius which thought of bioluminescence, & I couldn’t help but smile. I thought about life…His life, my life, & how good He’s been to me through it. I never imagined I could walk in such love & liberty. I could barely believe I was sitting in Georgia trying to catch fireflies…totally smitten. I remember thinking, the Lord has brought me SO far…
& He has,
& He will.
This training camp is going to be my Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12), my memorial stone to declare that the Lord has helped me thus far, & He will only ever continue to do just that.
He is a good, good Father.
