I am sick and tired of this team. I have no desire to talk to anyone, spend time with anyone. I just don't care anymore. I have negative thoughts all day long about each of my teammates. Im annoyed listening to them, being around them, every little thing they do. So much negativity is surrounding me. It feels so heavy. I keep waking up day after day trying to make the concious decision to have a good day, a positive attitude, and God for the strength to love my teammates. But nothing happens. I am not myself. It is evident to myself and my team. But nothing happens. Its gone on for more than a week now. And yet no one has asked me how I am doing. No one has saught me out in knowing that one of their teammates is not themselves. They should know something is wrong, right? But nothing happened.
One evening I think I finally realize what was happening. Some thing is on me. I thought this little episode would blow over after confessing my feelings to me team and asking the Lord for strength, but nothing happened. Something was hindering my ability to be myself and love my team. I was getting so frustrated with these feelings of negativity that I could not escape from! I tried to pray this off of me. I told it to leave. Once I asked, every thing suddenly got heavier. I gave up.
My team had a meeting that night about how we can love each other better, deeper, and to the fullest extent. Ideas and thoughts we're being thrown around the table. But I was in agony listening to their conversation. All I wanted was to be out of that room, out of that conversation. We were making commitments to each other of ways we promised to love one another. While in the mean time, they know I was hurting and did nothing for a week. I felt ignored and surrounded by a bunch of hypocrites (we're all about honesty, right?). How can we have a conversation about loving each other better we are not loving the one that is hurting? This was not who I am.
I told my team how I felt. I told them every single way my head had been thinking. I told them I was tired of them, I told them I didn't care, I told them I felt unloved. But I also asked them to pray for me. To pray off of me whatever had followed me here from Ho Chi Minh City. They prayed in the evening, they prayed the next morning, and the next evening. I woke up with the heaviness gone. I had shifted, and whatever was fighting against me fled, in the name of Jesus. I had gone through a week of hell. A week of feeling a huge weight just pushing me down. I have done a complete 180 in the last two days. I am back to being myself. I can no longer feel the heaviness surrounding me.
When one part of the body is hurting, the whole body cannot function properly to the fullest extent. Our team, Team Furious Love (ironic name?) has made the committment to love each other deeper. We are striving to feel when one is "off" and to love in those moments when love is the hardest thing to show. Jesus loved no matter the circumstances. If we are truly striving to look like him, we should do the same. We have committed time in prayer to ask for that love for each other. And the only way this love is going to come, is through our Father. Loving our of self is just plain exhausting. But He will give us the strength when we ask. We are taking an active approach to loving one another, one day at a time.
I wanted to share this with everyone to bring you back to the reality that we are not perfect! Look at the mess we we're in. But we recognized that mess and began to clean it up. Christians are allowed to fail. But Jesus has given us an insurmountable amount of grace. This was a huge teaching point for our team. But I feel that is when the Lord works the most, in times of struggle. I love each and every one of my teammates: Linds, Becks, Dee, Justin, and Mike and I dont know what I would do without each of them on this journey.
