I miss my people. I miss my teams (plural) and the good citizens of F squad.
I am in month 4 of alumni squad leading and quickly approaching my own season to come home – this time without plans to come back out to the field on the World Race. When I was on my race, I didn’t read my teammates blogs. I told myself that I would wait until I got home and that I would then read their blogs to help myself reflect on and process my race. Well, I’m in Indonesia on a Monday night and thought maybe that process could start early.
Two sentences into reading the first blog and I’m already sobbing. Maybe it’s Steffany Gretzinger singing in the background, but I suspect that the tears come from words my heart is trying to express but can’t.
I am on round 2 of the World Race, and after 16 months on the field, I still don’t know how to put what this community looks like into words. All I know is that time on the race doesn’t work like it does in typical life. A day is like a lifetime. Doing 24/7 life with 5 to 6 other people can be interesting. It’s the best and hardest thing about the race.
Relationships are what Jesus was about. He didn’t come to write a rule book for people because hearts are hearts and not data machines. We aren’t computers and He didn’t treat us as such. He met people—broken, messy, ugly situation people—exactly where they were at. Guess what? We’re called to do the same.
At times, the call to die to myself feels harder than physically choosing to die. Laying my desires down and putting someone else first, especially that person who is desperately hurting and broken, can feel more like torturing myself than loving them well.
That’s part of what so weird about Kingdom culture. Love is not just a feeling. It isn’t always easy. It’s an active choice—and a damn hard one at times. Truly loving the way Jesus did requires me to sacrifice myself in full.
Some of the things we sacrifice often for each other in World Race community are
- Time: Rather than investing in ourselves, we often pour into each other during intentional one on ones. Time is one of the most valuable things we possess since we can’t gain more, so to give it freely away can be hard! This ties in so deeply with energy and privacy too.
- Self-centeredness: When living with this many other people, there isn’t room to think only of our own self and also maintain a healthy team. It takes effort and willpower to think of others and walk in humility.
- Energy: When it’s been one heck of a day, team time has already happened, the plan was going to bed, and someone is leaking tears, there is a decision to be made. Sacrificing sleep is something I feel deeply, but choosing other people is something that makes a lasting impact. We aren’t just about reaching local people, we are also about reaching out to each other.
- Pride: I have to make the choice to give up my need to be right all the time and submit to learning about other perspectives and priorities. I thought praying for humility was the ”righteous” thing to do, and the Lord has delivered, but man oh man has it stung sometimes.
- Privacy: The buddy rule pretty much means the only place I can be alone is the bathroom. I’ve cried my fare share of tears hovering over a squatty potty just so that people couldn’t stare at me. The race doesn’t allow people to hide or run away from their problems. We get to face them head on, arm in arm with the people around us.
This life is hard but beautiful. It is a series of intentional choices that we are privileged to get to make. The victim circle is real and when community is hard it’s SO easy to step into, but then again that’s also an intentional choice.
All of this leads me back to F squad. In reflecting on the relationships I formed over the course of 11 months last year, I am not blind to the things that were hard or even at times painful, and yet I would choose to do it all over again for the ways I have grown and learned to choose to love without condition and also receive the same kind of love for myself.
So, to F squad: thank you for showing me this love and for allowing me to learn how to love you in the process too. I choose you all as much today as I did when we signed our contract at training camp and then some.
