Sometimes you enter a new season of your life expecting to grow, but then you realize that the new season is going to transform your entire life. You realize it’s going to change the way you view yourself. And at some point you wish it had happened earlier in life (but not really because then your new family wouldn’t be your new family (shout out to G-squad!). The World Race is that for me. I knew it was going to change me. I WANTED it to change me. But I didn’t expect it to change me in the ways it is.
I want to take this opportunity to explain something important about the World Race culture – feedback. Feedback is the process in which we call one another to a higher standard, to recognize what God is doing and encourage one another to push into that. We want to encourage those things others do well, and provide constructive feedback on things we need to grow in. I should explain that constructive feedback is not negative, hurtful, or judgmental. Constructive feedback (or growing feedback as my team calls it), comes from a place of love. Sometimes we do things, act a certain way, or struggle to live out what God has called us to. We see things in one another and encourage them to strive to grow in those areas. So today we had SUPER FEEDBACK – which means everyone on my team gave everyone else constructive feedback, sandwiched between 2 positive feedbacks (kind of like an Oreo).
To be totally honest…I was a little stressed, I haven’t received much constructive feedback this past month and was expecting the worse, even though when I did receive constructive feedback it was very encouraging. It encouraged me to speak when I had something to say, to not old back, because I have wisdom to share, and people want to hear it. That’s not negative. That’s life-giving. But despite the positive experience I had previously, I was stressed to receive constructive feedback from my team. I was expecting to be torn down. I was expecting to be told I was a horrible person. I was expecting to be the told I was the root of problems in our team (not that we really have had any serious problems). The issue is, when you have believed for so long that you don’t have value or worth, it’s hard to accept that your peers want to speak life over you and build you up. When you have believed the lie that you are isolated and alone, it hard to imagine that your team is going to stand alongside you and fight for you in the emotional and spiritual sense. (And my team is a strong group of women they’d fight physically for me too.)
So we had our super feedback session. I walked in feeling a little stressed. As I sat through everyone else’s feedback (yes, I got to go last, thanks for making me sweat ladies!) I was feeling anxious. Then it was my turn…and I felt loved, encouraged, built up, and supported. I laughed a little and I even cried. I cried because these women were calling me to embrace my identity as a child of God. They love me and want to see living in more freedom. And that’s pretty cool.
The key to good feedback, is that it brings life, it builds people up. It doesn’t tear them down. It recognizes someone’s heart and motivations behind behaviour and calls us to a higher standard of living. Folks at home better be ready for this! This feedback thing is coming with me. At this point I can’t wait to really see how it helps my team go into deeper relationship with one another, and how it helps me to go in deeper relationship with Christ. And in the future I can’t wait to see how it helps me build up my friends and family back home.
