I was fine until I got off the plane. Then it hit me as each step I took carried me closer to my brand new family. I felt like an 8th grader that transferred schools in October. I was slammed with doubts and fears and insecurities about my personality and abilities and competence. I was nowhere near prepared for the way the Lord was about to shatter me and use these beautiful souls to begin putting me back together.
If any of you have been around me when I crack, my typical solution is to shave my head, change my name, and disappear into the bowels of society. Perfectly logical, right? Needless to say, I’m a runner. I might not outright act on these impulses, there comes a point when my body shuts down and my heart retreats deep into the caves where no one can find me, see me, or hurt me. All my life I’ve had a big mushy heart that just LOVED pouring out and vulnerability and intimacy. As beautiful as these things are, they became like an addiction and I allowed people to come in and wreck shop over and over again just to get a fix. Over the last couple of years, I finally broke and the callouses began to form. I reached the point that I never imagined would ever happen to me: “I don’t know how much more I can take.” I began living in a state of constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the inevitable: “You’re too much” “You’re not enough” “I’ll take everything but don’t ask me for anything in return or else your love is selfish.” I cracked. And I had begun withdrawing myself from trusting people. Knowing this about myself, I mustered everything within me and marched into training camp with my heart firmly fastened open.
I took a good look in the eyes of the 30 people standing in front of me and I was overwhelmed.
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.” Matthew 6:22-23
I was dumbfounded. I looked straight into all of their eyes and felt the last thing I expected…. safe. I saw so much goodness gushing out of them that I settled into such immediate comfort and closeness with this new family of mine. I just knew, down in my core, that every single one of these people was going to be essential to my journey with Christ. I saw bravery, love, generosity, passion, and wounds just like mine. We were all here for love and it showed. We wasted no time in sharing our laughs, tears, and lives with each other. There was an unspoken understanding among each of us that the mission we were called to required deeply cultivated unity. So my heart continued to barrel headlong into these relationships without the arbitrary detail of time spent.
But then, I cracked. About halfway through training camp my heart slowed took in where it stood. I had spent days being broken and stripped by the Lord in ways I had been fighting for longer than I can remember. So here I was, exposed, naked, and broken in front of virtual strangers. Everything inside of me was screaming, “I don’t know these people. They don’t know me. How can I trust them? I can’t show them the ugly parts. I can’t handle their rejection right now. UNSAFE UNSAFE UNSAFE UNSAFE.” The sirens were blaring, calling for lockdown, and I began my retreat to the caves. This particular night my team had to make shifts to stay up praying all night long which we began with whole group praise and worship. My heart was rapidly hardening and I could feel myself getting defensive and taking everything as attack and rejection. Every muscle in my body was tensed and ready to run. Arms crossed, I stood outside the dining tent, staring at the sky, as my squad started singing Brokenness Aside by All Sons & Daughters which begins:
“Will your grace run out if I let You down? Cause all I know is how to run.”
Still angry and defensive, tears started to roll down my face. I begrudgingly joined the majority of the group on the other side of the tent. Every step felt like there was an anvil attached to my ankle. One of my new sisters came over, held me, and just let me cry, vent, be angry, be scared, and just remind me of how loved I am. I wasn’t settled but I wasn’t angry anymore. We went down to the pavilion to start the prayer shifts and I shuffled off to a corner to journal out my frustration and beg for the weight on my heart to lift. I decided I would finish up with my journal, sing my favorite hymn, Come Thou Fount, as internal peace offering with my squadmates and then go to bed (well… tent). Not a full 2 minutes after I decided this, my squadmates across the pavilion started singing Come Thou Fount. It may seem inconsequential to some but for my raw and sensitive little heart, it was the beginning of sweet relief. Little by little the debris from the landslide of all my fears that had buried my heart deep in insecurity began to come off.
Is it still immensely intimidating to look at a group of people you’ve known for 10 days and see how important they are to you? Absolutely. But we will carry each other. One member of our training team had been on a previous L squad (squads are labeled alphabetically and the letters are recycled once the end of the alphabet is reached) and he told us that they prayed for future L squads to love each other fiercely. Well, prayer answered. We love each other fiercely because we love God fiercely. And His love for us is more fierce than we could possibly fathom.
