Well I’ve been thinking for the past few days about what to tell you all in this post. I got home from training camp on Sunday night and have run through all the things I could possibly tell you about. I could tell you about how long the sessions were or how weird all the food was or how many gross bugs there are in Georgia or how terrible the weather was, but let’s be real – those are not the things that have changed me nor are they the things that truly matter. And I would love love love to tell you about those things, so let me know if you wanna catch up! But in just one post I want to be able to tell you all about what really matters. So let’s talk real here.
The past few months I’ve had a lot of doubts about whether or not the World Race was for me. And although I tried to go into training camp with no expectations I had a few and a big one was that training camp would take away all of my fear and feelings of incompetence and replace them with excitement. The first few days did nothing but fuel my apprehension.
I went into training camp to be surrounded by 272 new people with funny accents that I had never met, with this pressure of needing to love them and needing to do it fast because 38 of them were going to be my family members for the next 9 months. On top of this we had 3 sessions a day teaching us all about missional living, breaking down the gospel, ministry mindset, and the list continued- let’s just say they were not talks you could day dream in and still get the lesson at the end.
I wanted all of this to make me excited. I knew, for the most part, what I was getting into. I had felt the call from God to be here, and when I first heard it the idea of learning to be comfortable in the uncomfortable was thrilling. Yet those first few days, I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t know if I needed to go home, and that is honestly what I wanted to do. So I wrestled with God. I was angry with Him, I screamed and I cried at Him.
I had felt the loneliness of not hearing back from God plenty of times before and I was blunt with Him; I told him if He wouldn’t show me why I was there then I was going home because it wasn’t worth it.
Guess what! He showed me something worth it!
It’s crazy how faithful our God is and even crazier that we doubt Him.
I’m sure after all if this you’re expecting me to tell you that God took away my fear and reminded me of my purpose and all these things that I wanted Him to do. That’s not what I got though. Those things are still a work in progress.
So what did He do? How did he come through?
He showed me himself. I danced with the Most High King, as His princess.
You see, God didn’t allow me to sit through the sessions and take notes and soak it all in and feel mentally prepared for the World Race. I asked God at the beginning of each session to teach me what He wanted to teach me through the speaker. And He asked me a question in response, he said, “Will you just spend some time alone with me instead? I want to be with you.”
So I did. We did just as I said, we danced. And He held me as His child. And I saw the eyes of God. I saw the emotions conveyed through His eyes when He looked at me- He was proud. And my pain and my tears hurt Him too.
So I won’t lie, there were many pieces of those sessions that I didn’t hear at all. But my mind and my heart were closer to my God then they ever have been. He didn’t take away all my fears but He told me he was going with me to face them. He gave me connections with my team to have people along side me in the journey and He showed me the intimacy we can have together. I didn’t doubt that I could hear from God, not for a moment. I did doubt that he wanted to speak to me or had anything to say to me; I believed the lie of Satan that told me I had to do things alone. Yet packed into a room of folding chairs and 300 other people I found that the closest I could be to anyone was with my God.
