I had been sitting on my bed staring at my orange pack for about 10 minutes. My flight to training camp was in 5 hours and I was FREAKING out! I felt so unprepared. I had only set up my tent once, bought all of my clothes the week before, and hadn’t even opened up my sleeping bag to see if it was cozy. I really felt I was going in blind and that was terrifying. No amount of vlogs or blogs made me feel better about going. People were asking me how I felt before I left and I kept saying excited and terrified, and I meant it. How does one prepare themselves for training camp for World Race? Well, I’m here to tell you exactly what you need to make it through those two eye opening, heart discerning, physically challenging weeks.
Here it is: At training camp you NEED…absolutely NEED… Joy
I’m sorry if you came here for a practical list of things to pack. I can tell you to bring more socks than you think you’ll need and less shampoo. I tried to think of some fun acronym out of words but everything pointed back to joy. In ever situation at training camp you need joy. Bucket showers in 34 degree weather…JOY! Finding a pregnant spider in my tent…JOY! Hiking 3.3 miles in an hour with my pack on…JOY! Count it all as joy because you made it to training camp. You applied for World Race, you’ve fundraised at least $5,000 to your goal, you made it to Gainesville, GA with 30 other people that you have never met before, and you are about to go on the biggest emotional, spiritual, and physically taxing roller coaster of your life. I have to say I went into training camp with more fear but throughout the week I found my joy. This was not just finding joy in the outward struggles but internal as well. Throughout different sessions you dig down and find some things that you really buried down. Things you thought you forgot or had already dealt with tend to make themselves known. I had to break down a few walls but I eventually found the joy I was looking for. I’ll tell you my story and I hope that it helps you on your training camp journey.
I am a self-denying introvert that can seem like an extrovert in certain situations but really wishes I was sitting in a café by myself listening to music scores from movies. I was not always this introverted though. I can tell you the exact day that I became a recluse, September 6th, 2016. That was the day that I hopped on a plane from Seoul, South Korea to Seattle, WA. I have to be honest, when I am introduced into a new group of people or move somewhere new I have to seriously prep myself for it. I start thinking about how I should act and what I should say weeks in advance. When I knew I was going back to the states, I felt like I did not know how to act normal in an American setting anymore. I had changed my manners, clothes, speaking, and lifestyle to fit into Korean culture as much as possible. I didn’t want to be seen as a foreigner even though I am very clearly not Korean. I had completely changed so much of myself, I started to worry that I was going to look super weird around everyone else. I stepped off of the airplane in SeaTac airport thinking about how I wanted this group of people to see me. I wanted to be seen as someone different than I had made myself to be in Korea. This backfired real quick because I scared myself into thinking that no one would really like me the way that I was. I became quiet, introspective, and a homebody which altered the way that I looked at pretty much everyone and everything. I became super reflective which helped me to really dig down and wipe off the dust on the shy, quiet person I used to be. I hid that person in Korea because I needed to be outgoing, I needed to get to know a lot of people, I needed to feel like I had a great support group in this country where I lived by myself. But, when I moved to Seattle, I didn’t have to be that person. I knew that I had a good solid family around me at City Church and it made me feel safe. I got a chance to look at who I was and who God created me to be for a whole year. I felt like I was kind of in a shell of not really knowing who I was but trying to figure it out and break down the persona that I had made up in my mind and just trying to…be. It may sound all sorts of confusing, and it was! You are literally fighting with yourself on who you are and who you want to be. How does your brain do that?
As I became more of any introvert, I truly loathed some of the struggles that I would have in social settings and wanting to stay inside and watch a movie more than go out with others. This was never the problem in Korea. I was never home and I loved being the center of attention. I started to wonder how I dug myself down into such a deep hole of a wallflower and I resented it. I was truly mad that I had become an introvert! Who does this kind of stuff? Am I the only one that gets mad that I have introverted tendencies? It just turns into a war of not really liking who you are and not being able to accept the habits that come with it. Okay, lets fast forward to Training Camp. I hope you don’t think I have the answer for introvert tendencies because I don’t have that solution.
What word do you think I am going to say helped me get past that tug of war? If you thought Nutella, you were half way there. But, the answer was joy! Instead of fighting with myself and struggling with conversation, I spent my training camp finding my joy! You might just be a joyful person and to that I applaud you. I have joyful moments or maybe even days but I am saying like finding that core of joy in your soul and letting it outshine anything that tries to cover it or diminish the happiness that lives inside of you. It is not an easy process and in a sense you kind of have to break yourself down in order to build yourself back up. The session on Sunday afternoon was about shame and what keeps you from living the fullness of your life. We had to answer the question: Is there any area of my life that I have shame? My brain was all but screaming, “YAAAAAASSSSSS! This girl, RIGHT HERE, hates the way that she is! She fears no one really loves her because she thinks they don’t know her true personality! She’s a mess!” I have a pretty outspoken mind. But, I realized how much I had beaten myself up over the personality and character that God handcrafted for ME!! I do not have the authority to judge myself! Nothing will look right in my lens of wrong if I keep telling myself that my tendencies are not good. Not only that, but throughout the training camp, I found that I had nothing to hide and I shouldn’t hide. This new family would find out my deepest darkest secrets in no time so I mind as well be honest with them on what I was struggling with. We went around the circle and proclaimed something over that shame. My proclamation was “I am loved.” My shame stems from telling myself that people don’t really know who I am so therefore don’t really love me. This is not true and I know that! No need to yell at me in the comment section but that is something that would creep into my mind from time to time. I just held back from things I wanted to say or relationships that I felt like were not open enough for me to feel comfortable. It was time for me to take a step back and say,”whoa! You are exactly where you are supposed to be surrounded by people who love you for who you are.” It’s time for me to stop tearing myself down and know in my knower that I am who God created me to be. There is a sense of freedom in stating things out loud surrounded by people who believe that statement about you too.
It was after that day that I had joy spoken over me 3 times in the span of a week. Joy in my spirit, joy in my worship, and joy in my preparation for next year. I was building on a genuine extravagant joy that was emanating from the inside out. This wasn’t just joy through the circumstances on the outside, it was joy in the acceptance of who I was created to be and how it was going to be used to impact the world next year. How can I be expected to love others when I find it hard to love myself? For some people it takes longer than others to really be happy with who they are. I thought I knew who I was and then I was thrown into new circumstances that told me otherwise. I had realized that I never really knew who I was, I just knew the person that I wanted to be. What I found through training camp is that you won’t ever really feel prepared. And I don’t think that I will really feel ready when we are back together again for launch either. We all went through some pretty tough stuff but I think what was most important is that we went through everything as a squad. We were there for each other always cheering each other on and praying for one another. Even if you think you have a limit, you will pass it. You will surprise yourself and come back from training camp with a lot of processing to do so take the day off! I want to tell you as you prepare for training camp not to turn to a feeling of fear, but a feeling of beginning. This is going to be a camp of firsts for you. First time meeting your squad, first time camping, first time take a bucket shower, first time eating crickets, first time raising your hands in worship, first time trying listening prayer, first time dealing with some really tough stuff, first time prepping for the biggest adventure of your life. These two weeks are just the beginning. They are like the prologue to the new novel to come through your World Race journey. Through all this, I can’t help but think of the joy that God feels as He watches us raise our hands one by one and say, “send me.” You made that choice and He will bring the joy that will sustain you through EVERYTHING!
Speaking of joy! I think I have said that word a lot in this post…my English skills are kicking in and telling me to stop. But I have to mention one more thing. On the first day of training camp there was a workshop that I attended for people interested in storytelling whether that be in photography or videography. I am more interested in writing BUT I created a new project in my mind even before training camp really started!! Introducing:
The Joy Project
While out on the field I hope to capture genuine smiles and laughs where ever I go. I want my World Race experience to be told through the people that I meet. Through portraits and wide angle shots, I want you to see God’s creation in the the vast differences of the world and even some of the similarities. These portraits are for me to remember the people I’ve met and sparked my heart with their stories as well. Look forward to the first post of my joy project starting with one of my squad mates next month!
