Most everybody who knows me, has heard me talk about my World Race training camp before. But I know that most of you haven’t experienced it before, so I wanted to share some stories from my 10 days in Georgia.
I was sick.
That’s all I could think about for most of my training camp. I learned so much about myself, my relationship with others, and my relationship with God. But I was so concerned with myself that I wasn’t really listening to what God had to say to me. I drove two days down to Georgia with a terrible cold. It only got worse while I was there. It was cold and wet every night, so I didn’t get any relief and eventually I lost my voice.
Everyone on my squad was so supportive and sweet to me, always offering me medicine and cough drops. And when we had team exercises and workouts they were so ready to help me out and take my push ups for me. But for the first two days I was so much more concerned about my fever that I didn’t connect with God how I know I should have.
But the third day, we broke up into team exercises. This was the first time I truly learned about silence. We had figure out how to get everybody on our team across a figurative river, but we all had to go at the same time. Like the big mouth I am, I suggested ideas and meshed everybody else’s together to get us across the river. But then we had to get back, and our mentor told us that I wasn’t allowed to talk this time around.
I just stood there. I couldn’t express my thoughts and ideas because I didn’t have a voice. I? was forced to stand there and wait for my team to figure it out without me. Afterwards my mentor suggested that I choose silence first, then speak up with my ideas when others have had a chance to speak. I put it to the test in our next exercise. And it worked so well. I was able to experience everybody else’s creativity, then when they were all done I meshed our ideas together.
Learning silence is an invaluable skill that God wants to teach all of us. If you really want to hear him, sometimes silence is the best way. Along with silence comes patience. You can’t ask God to question and expect him to answer in your time, sometimes you have to sit there in silence for more than 10 seconds. Silence can be terrifying. I’m one of those people that tries to start conversation just so the room isn’t quiet. I have to have music playing in my car on the way to work. Even at night, I need a fan running or something going so that I’m not in silence. But the more I practice it, the more easily it comes to me.
So I dare you to try it today. Ask God what He is trying to tell you, and then wait. Sometimes he answers right away. Sometimes he’ll show you a billboard with the answer on it. Sometimes you’ll give up waiting and turn the radio on and you’ll hear exactly what you needed to hear.
The theme I took from training camp, that God wanted me to learn the most, was silence. Because I was sick and didn’t have it was hard for me to try to take the lead. And because I didn’t have a voice I couldn’t sing very loud, I couldn’t speak up with all of my thoughts like I usually do, I was forced to sit there and listen. But in listening I was able to form friendships and bonds with my teammates and squadmates that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do if I had been competing, I was able to get to know them in a way that I probably would have never gotten to know them if I hadn’t been quiet. So if you struggle with the same thing that I struggle with, I dare you to try silence and patience.
