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Before I came on the Race I lived with 2 other women as roommates. I thought I knew what it feel like to live in constant community. Being the Race puts a whole NEW perspective on the word “community”!
As I said in a previous post, getting a team is like participating in an Arranged Marriage. The people you do life with over the next couple months to a year is not decided by you. The Holy Spirit and your leadership team make those decisions for you. And you get to make the arranged marriage work.
Can you imagine what it feels like to sleep next to your spouse… Eat next to your spouse… Be in close proximity to your spouse when he or she farts… Wake next to your spouse… Work next to your spouse… And so many more things day in and day out? But here is the catch… what if YOU NEVER GET AWAY FROM YOUR SPOUSE! See that list I wrote above doesn’t have breaks in it where your get to go hang out with the boys or your girls because your boys and girls are the same people you are trying to get away from!
Please don’t miss understand. It is great doing life with people and having someone to share life with for every good, bad, and in between moment of life, but also recognize that is pretty much the opposite of culture in the US. It is not the way that we currently live in the States. In America, independence starts so early all with the effort to hurry up and get the children out on their own so that parents can go live life they want to live and on their own.
Take me for example, I moved out of my mother’s house at 17. For the last 15 years I’ve lived with a lot of space to have breaks from the closest people in my life. I never realized just how much space I had, even living with 2 other roommates, until I no longer had it. I never knew how precious silence was until I missed it. I never knew how much alone time I needed with God until I was desperate for it.
So as I read the book Secret of the Secret Places and I came to the chapter that speaks of the importance of alone time with God. I ask Him directly “Lord, how do I get alone time with You when I can barely have the space to take a little extra time in the bathroom by myself? How do I imitate the space I had at home when I could read the Bible aloud and pray out loud as if you were sitting right next to me? That was a luxury that I no longer have.”
I prayed and did some listening prayer about this for a couple days and one day as I reflected on an intense fast I just did, God showed me that my journal was the key and the answer to my need.
During this time of trial there would be days where I would hangrily want to rip a person to shreds, but instead I would pull out my journal and pray, in desperation, to God for His help to keep me strong and obedient to my convicts in Him. And it sounds crazy, but as I wrote I always felt the pressure dwindle away little by little as I figured out how to give my problems to Him regardless of the situation and people around me.
Through journaling, I learned how to “shut my door” of my secret place regardless of any and every when, where, how, and why that was currently taking place.
You may have more space and freedom from people where you can have alone time with God, but I still encourage you to try journaling.
Get a journal. Write in your journal as if you are talking to God (because you are). And cast your cares on Him because He will make your load light. He wants to support us and help us through those difficults times, but it requires us to ask Him and to give Him room to reply. I found that journaling gives space for all those things to happen.
