(NOTE: an honest heart starts with an acceptance of imperfection and weakness. Vulnerability is the manifestation of that. In this blog and I intend for the rest to come, I will work through and try to explain what goes on wayyy down inside me. Where I feel the gaps in my soul cry out and God reach down and fill up. Where I experience all the things that just don’t quite make sense yet so this is a WARNING that what you might read might not all make sense, for now. My plan is that in reading it you can see the love of Jesus for you and your soul’s deepest doubts and shadowed pain. He is totally willing and ready to walk with you. He is with me, right now. This isn’t a page for polished stories, people, or purposes. It’s a place of Jesus’s healing love. Thank you so much for coming here. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you.)
SO.
Training camp.
Training camp was exactly that. Training. When I landed in Raleigh last Friday, a great appreciation for RDU’s singular building and simplistic style made me feel all the more at home. However, when I landed in Atlanta for the first day of training camp I was in a very different range of emotions as I touched down.
Much like Atlanta, and the fact there LITERALLY IS A TRAIN that travels through the airport, describes my bewilderment in meeting my squad, mentors, and the World Race organization for the first day. Immediately questions like “who are these people?” And “how did I even get here” started to barrel through my mind on the way to Gainesville from Atlanta. I was introduced to my entire squad those first couple of days, as well as, some difficult realities and emotions.
To be honest, when I walked into worship that first night, I was dealing with a lack of confidence in my decision for the next 9 months of my life and how little me was going to impact a group (and WORLD) so large. But, in worship, one of the serve team workers walked up to me and spoke these words of encouragement over me… “…You are going to kill it this week and you are suppose to be here…”
I was totally floored. God decided to break through time and space to communicate to a person that I needed to know that I AM suppose to be on this trip for HIS purpose. Woah. After that night, I was expecting some crazy things to happen and He didn’t let up.
—In the literal sense, I know that I have made friends for the rest of my life and will never lose the memories shared over those ten days. The nights where I opened up my bag to pitch my tent, to blow up my sleeping pad, to change clothes, to then sweat my butt off, to then realize all of it had to be ready to go by 7:30 in the morning. All of that might not sound like a great challenge but it was, for me, for sure. The nights where we shared testimonies in a tent, singing, and laughing. The nights that we stood around the campfire and began to see each other in a fuller picture of who we are. The nights that I talked to my parents on the phone and could hear the monotone drowsiness of my voice. The nights we were EXCITED for a nice bucket shower that left you clean, but not too clean. The nights that started to bind me closer and closer to the people around me. My squad.
In the daytime, the main thing I remember is the food and it was a SOLID 8.7. We ate with our hands, sporks, and chopsticks and left the plates c-l-e-a-n. There were really, really good meals and then there were those you ate out of the love (hunger) of your heart. Most of all though…I met the grand group of men I’ll be traveling with for the next nine months and the lineup is… (*Drumroll*)
-Jordan Kouri
-Blake Bohning
-Joe Takayoshi
-Blake Sellers
-Eathan Sherrell
-Noah Roah
-Nick Randau
And our leader
-Caleb Callaway
Woah. I know.
Just writing this down makes me happy. Each of them, as you will see, bring such a unique degree of perspective into our family. Each of them has lived, seen, and dreamed something different and I know that with these guys I’ll be discovering those things with them. I’ll become who I am to be. But with perspective comes change and endearment to the scars that are left in the wake of memories and moments. I know that is why God has positioned me to be TOTALLY out of my comfort zone and life really for the next nine months. Which leads me to what I believe God wanted me to see at training camp, me (or the lack thereof).
Me and my lack of trust and identity in Him. For so long I have looked to the excitement of others in the hunger of attention, purpose, relationships, and really joy. I never really was choosing joy for the sake of looking to Jesus but rather, I wanted to be happy and ecstatic about something. I was trying to appropriate myself to those around me instead to the one within me. I kept looking for acceptance and as long as I had my family, it would be there, waiting on me. So in all of it, God wanted me to see the abandonment of myself. Literally. All of it. Known and unknown. He wanted me to see that He fills me, He loves me, He cares for me, and if I give up all that is known to myself, I might just discover the world he has waiting for me on the other side.
Now all that might not make sense because honestly I don’t get it all yet, but what I want you to know is that God taught me that beginning in a place of brokenness is beginning in the place of healing.
“Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.”
Psalm 139:10
