Have you ever had a worship and prayer session that was so good that you had the cops called on you? Neither did I until I went to training camp, so let’s just say that this is one of the many crazy things that I did for the Lord the ten days of training camp. From eating crickets to waking up at 5 in the morning to have a prayer session, training camp was full of exciting (and sometimes disgusting) adventures! I really can’t go into much details of what I actually did, since it’s a trend for future racers to go and scavenge old blog posts to see what training camp will be like. What I can tell you though is what the Lord did in me during that period, and boy was it messy. Whenever I asked people why they thought training camp was difficult the response was always about the physical challenges of the week, either it’s the food, sleeping arrangements, or whatever else was thrown at us that day. See those things never really bothered me; what got to me was what the Lord was doing in my heart, or rather the lack of what He was doing. In reality, He was trying to speak to me all week, I was just too stubborn and prideful to hear and accept what He was trying to do. The first few nights were absolutely killer; I could see the Lord working all around me. It was one of the most beautiful things ever. If you have been to any Christian summer camp, you’ll know how the Lord always shows up on the last night, because we just expect Him to be there. Now imagine that over a scale of 10 days, that’s what training camp, was like.
The thing is, at some point I stopped feeling anything. It was the night that we were taught forgiveness, and the whole night I felt nothing. It was the worst night of worship and teaching that I’ve ever experienced. It’s not like when a sermon is taught on something you already know, there was clearly a feeling of absence in my gut. I felt terrible, no matter what prayer I prayed nor however many tears I shed, I couldn’t feel a thing. It got to the point where I was on the floor, tears streaming down my face, crying out to the Lord to do anything. The reality is that I didn’t want the Lord to do anything; I wanted to hold on to all my anger and emotions. They were mine; I had a right to feel what I felt. Granted at the time of the floor incident I didn’t know this, but that was the reality of the situation. I’m about to get rather real here, so just a final warning. I put on a brave face when it comes to my father, I say I’m okay and that I’m not affected, that I know that it’s what needed to be done. I really wasn’t though. I was bitter and hurt. I didn’t allow myself to feel these things, someone in my family had to be the strong one, the one to put on a brave face and send my dad off with a smile. I didn’t even know myself that I was hurting; I was so good at fooling everyone that I fooled myself. I’ve prayed a prayer of forgiveness before, but I obviously didn’t mean it if I was feeling this way. Even now I don’t know if I’ve really given it all up considering how close I am to tears writing this. To better follow the timeline of the events, this emptiness happened on the second or third night, the realization came on night nine before I tried to go to bed for the first time. I was too prideful to think that I needed to forgive anyone; I thought I was peachy. That was definitely not the case. It was around the next day I think that the Lord placed the entirety of Isaiah 22 on my heart, which is something that you really do not want placed on your heart. To summarize the chapter, it’s essentially about the complete destruction of Jerusalem. What a nice message to wake up to, right?
Anyway to move on from the inner turmoil, the next couple of days were just a lot of fun and learning. From having to hike 11 miles with only 62 ounces of water, to eating crickets it was amazing. To clarify on the cop part of my intro, we were having a camp out at one point, and we just prayed healing over one girl on my squad. This turned into prayer for another person to another, and at some point it just became this huge prayer thing. My squad and I, roughly 60 people, were shouting from the tops of our lungs to the Lord, whether it be in prayer or worship, it was amazing. So amazing apparently that the neighbors heard us and decided to calm us down a little. No one knew this was going on until I walked up out of our campsite to find a police car pull up. I spoke to the officer very respectfully, and he just asked us to keep it down. Luckily for us we were close to done at that point, so not to many dreams were broken.
To move on, the Lord did many things over the ten days, and it amazes me that the most work done in me happened over the course of an hour. Camp was almost over, and I was settling down to go to bed the last night, when some one asked a simple question, “How’s your family doing?”. I don’t know why, but immediately I was upset. I was seeing red. I think I responded a little too bitterly due to the response of, “What’s wrong?”. I was so mad that I just stood up and walked away into the trees. I was done. I knew at that moment that I really wasn’t through with my emotions towards my dad. I just started to yell at the Lord, and I will admit more than a few curses flew out of my mouth. I was just so furious about so many things. Apparently I’m pretty terrible at giving emotions up to the Lord, so in that moment it all came out. My fears and frustrations, my anger, bitterness, you name a bad emotion it was there. At one point I was just done, I fell to the ground and just let the tears flow down my face. Jerusalem had definitely been destroyed. I was a mess, but I managed to make it back to my tent where I just sat and vented to a friend. I poured out all my insecurities, and I finally was able to receive the love that I was denying myself for so long. I never allowed myself to feel worthy of being loved by anyone; I would spend my days pouring into people, yet I would never allow them to really pour back into me. I’m not going say that it was this time of instant healing and everything was better, this is something that I’m still processing and working on, and probably will be working on for quite some time. I always prayed for the Lord to break my heart for what breaks His, and His heartbreaks for me. It breaks in the way that a father’s heart breaks when he sees his son struggling and hurting, and then doing nothing about it. My Father claims me, and I am worthy of His love.
Well that was quite the long post about my current spiritual journey with the Lord, and now it’s time to talk about the second half of my title: fundraising. At the time of writing this I have $5,135 in my support account, and I need $10,000 to meet my second goal. The thing is that my second deadline is September 16th, so that means I need close to $5,000 in a course of 13 days (since online donations need 3-4 days to process, I really have until the 13th). The situation is pretty dire, and I am definitely feeling the stress here. So I would like to ask you to give, and it doesn’t have to be anything big. Right now all I’m asking for is $10, if you have made it this far into the blog, just give $10. If every person that read my last blog gave $10, I would be past my second goal and then some. Every little thing counts, and each donation means the world to me. The amount I’m asking for is one day of not eating out at lunch, one week without your sonic drink. If you feel called to give more than $10, that’s fantastic! But at this point and time, $10 has the potential to change my entire situation, so please consider giving something.
Thanks for reading this post, I know that it was a little all over the place, and that is mostly due to my thoughts still being all over the place. Please continue to pray for me as I hopefully get to embark on my journey. I really cannot thank you all enough for the support that I’ve been shown.
Blessings and Love,
Tucker Stevens.
