Month 4 debrief was a whirlwind. I jumped off a bridge with Brandi, parted with Team United, played hours of spike ball, said goodbye to team leading, ate crocodile and impala, and said yes to a new job.
I will now be apart of a 2-woman team: TNT (Team No Team). My good friend Lindsey and I will be the new squad leaders of 5th generation B-squad. Yeah, you heard it, squad leaders. So what does that mean to be a squad leader? Well, we are currently in training in Gabarone, Botswana with our mentor and old squad leaders trying to figure it out.
As a squad leader, our responsibility is to the people on our squad: their safety, their growth, and their world race experience. We will be traveling with different teams to participate in ministry with them just like we did before, but we will be working with multiple teams instead of just one. We want to facilitate and cultivate an environment of growth and transformation among our squad and teams. Some practical responsibilities include planning and organizing leadership development weekends (LDWs) and debriefs for our squad after certain months, holding weekly leadership calls with our mentor and coaches who live in the States, and traveling with a racer to seek medical attention if they need it.
So I’ll have to be honest. I’m quite nervous for this new position. As we are going through training, a lot of what if questions pop up. What if a team doesn’t get along with their ministry host? What if there is a conflict we need to solve but we aren’t with that team? What if we get stuck crossing a border and can’t get across (this just happened by the way)? All these questions and more came to my mind, but I realized a lot of my questions are instigated by fear. I’m asking only because I’m scared I won’t be able to handle those what if situations.
I have fears about this new position. Fear that I won’t lead my squad well, fear that I won’t have influence on my squad, fear that I won’t make the right decisions. As I’m processing through these fears, I realized that nothing that the Lord has placed in my life has given me permission to fear. Meaning, the Lord doesn’t allow fear to come in between me and His calling on my life. I am the only one who allows it. So even though I have fear, I refuse to let that fear come between me and my calling to be a squad leader for the rest of my race. If I truly believe that the Lord has and will equip me for this job, then I should never give fear the authority in my life to say yes or no.
I’ve decided to be excited about this opportunity because I know that I will learn so many lessons from the Lord. Change may be hard, and the unknown may be scary, but I am called to live a life marked by change. The Lord never wants me to settle into something to become complacent. The more change, the more growth. And I have to be okay with that.
