I Know What You Did Last Training Camp. . . - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

WELL….Actually, you don't. . . (sheepish grin)
because I've managed to avoid blogging about, well, anything, really, ever since I've returned.
I was literally plunged back into the routine that I had dropped before camp and hadn't been up for air until now.

Yep, until now.
Now I am no longer a college student.
Now I am moving out of my Los Angeles apartment.
I just purchased my one-way plane ticket to launch.
One way.

This is really happening, isn't it?
Despite all my whining and wailing and pathetic bouts of extreme self doubt,
manifest in crying spells, anxious rants to my poor roommates, and nights arguing with God,
He has brought me through the initial birthing pains of what it takes to surrender,
no, I mean, really surrender . . . my thoughts, my worry, my control, my "me."

It feels like it's been so long since I made the first seemingly innocuous search on Google
for "The World Race" and it feels even longer since I first stepped off of the airplane to a hot
and humid, violet-gray Chattanooga sky and walked through the empty, dimly-lit, insubstantial airport at 10 pm . . .
wondering how a big city girl like myself was going to get to training camp, let alone survive the "wilderness"
that I assumed I was going to encounter.

It feels like it's been so long since God changed my world around and showed me that there was
an enormous disparity between the reality of my world, and the reality of His. That I really needed to see
the world in order to merge the two views. To see the world through God's eyes is dangerous, in that it's absolutely heart-wrenching. You cannot come out of it unscathed, unaffected, and most of all, untouched.

When people ask me about how training camp went, I'm sure they expect a semi-conventional response like, "Oh, it went great." Or, "It was fine, I feel trained now." Yet all I can muster up are feelings with no corresponding words. But in all honesty, training camp felt like someone had shaved off all the hair from my body, threw me into the washing mashine for sixteen cycles, wrung me out to dry in the storm with clothespins on my ears while a mystical unicorn serenaded me with "We Shall Overcome" on the harp. Training camp felt like what an animal feels like when it sees itself for the very first time in a junkyard shard of mirrored glass. "Wait, THIS is what I look like? THIS is what people see?" Training camp felt like starving and realiziing that sustenance can only really come from an eternal source.

It bothered me when people would scoff after finding out I had caught cold during training camp and say, "And you expect it to be any different out in the world? How are you going to survive? How are you going to fend for yourself?" I guess it didn't bother me so much as it just brought disappointment at the assumptive nature of those statements. I don't expect it to be different, at all, in fact, believe me, the scenarios that my God-given overactive imagination have played out over and over and over in my head are far worse. . . but I suppose I just don't really … care. No, that's not the word, it's not that I don't care — Only that, it doesn't matter. If we have really invested ourselves to do God's work and to not only experience, but to share His love, we need to know that intrinsic within His love, is also His suffering. True love is what was seen on the cross, and it's both frightening and glorious at the same time. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that I'm going to go into a dark cave and perform any acts of self-flagellation or anything. . . Only that, I'm not afraid, and I don't have to be.

When people ask me whether or not I am excited to leave, usually I give a very diplomatic answer. A "yes, but" or a half enthusiastic "yeahh….." Which sparks in them another question. . .

"This WAS your choice, wasn't it? Why don't you seem excited?"

Ha.
Sometimes I'm not sure anymore.
Maybe if I had a choice, I would be on a deserted island drinking lavender tea and making sandcastles.
But this isn't about choice . . . It's about a calling, and a desperate need.

Stranded. . .