We drove home from Atlanta thinking “we get a hot shower, a good meal, and our own bed tonight!” I (Wayne) literally took one shower — out of a bucket — for the entire duration of Training Camp. I had developed quite a formidable scent, so to say that I was looking forward to a shower would have been an understatement, and it didn’t hurt my feelings that Codie took one either. We also spent the last week or so having some pretty unconventional meals. Unconventional in portion size, availability of utensils, and in ingredients. We ate some weird food, and some good food… and mostly ate with our hands. Our dinner tables had eight people, and often times we had enough food for around 6 people, but I never left a meal thinking “I’m still hungry.” And after a week of “sleeping scenarios”, rainy tent nights, and exhausting physical activity – the thought of having our own bed again seemed pretty reasonable haha… There were many times at training camp that I felt what I can only describe as “outside of my comfort zone”, and in those moments, it was very natural for me to look back on what I had come from (i.e. a warm dry bed, hot showers) and look forward to having those things again – they brought me comfort.
I thought they did anyway.
I now see them as a distraction, a temptation, a mirage to remove me from the moment I’m in. The truth is, we got home Saturday night and I had a really hard time. See, in the community meals we ate all week – since we never really had a lot of food to share – the focus was taken off of the food, off of myself and what I want… the focus instead was “does everyone have what they need.” But in my first meal back home, I was, simply put, gluttonous. The hunger had shifted from selfless reliance to greed and selfishness. After dinner, Codie and I went back to our apartment… and it was kinda boring. It felt sort of isolated because we didn’t have 50 other people shoved in there with us! We went to bed and all I could think was “I’d rather be in my tent.” And I believe this thought had good intentions – I genuinely thought that if I had been in my tent it would have been more “comfortable” because it would have reminded me of what I had just left behind. Truthfully though, that’s exactly the same temptation and mirage that I had been subjected to the entire time I was at training camp while thinking “my bed would be nice right now.” The thing is, they are all just things. The things from home and the things from camp are both void of meaning without the environment they are surrounded by. I missed my tent not because I like sleeping in it, but because I now associate it with community. I miss the community meals, certainly not because I didn’t get as much food, but because I associate them with selflessness and togetherness. I missed my bed while at training camp because it brought me physical comfort but when I returned home, I realized that physical comfort isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It is so much sweeter to be strained physically but at peace emotionally, in community and in the spirit of Christ.
Comfort, I’ve come to realize, isn’t as objective I thought it was. As a matter of fact, it’s so subjective that I don’t even know that the word “comfortable” can carry the weight of what it actually means… To elaborate: I was most comfortable when I was outside of my so called comfort zone. Which is true… but it’s sort of like saying “I’m a better driver when I’m outside my car.” By definition, you have to be in your car to be driving – so how we define “driving” is critical! My question then, is: what’s our definition of comfort? What do we allow to make us comfortable, what do we allow to hold us back because we are scared of being uncomfortable?
