On Valentine’s Day, our squad spent the entire day honoring each other and truly expressing our love. It was a bigger holiday than Christmas and New Year’s combined. Our day started out going downstairs to see that our family room was decorated with balloons, flowers, candles, and soon after came the heart-shaped confetti all done by the men on our squad. Our male squad leader made us pink pancakes, and as we ate them the guys read us a note they had written specifically for us women. Little did they know that we had a surprise of our own to honor them with. We all chipped in and paid for them to go bowling, which they were very very excited about, and while they were out doing that: we cleaned their room, bought them all an individual pizza, we wrote each of them notes, and bought their favorite candy/snacks. We wanted to show them how much we love and appreciate them. The night ended with the guys on our squad washing all the girl’s feet and praying over us. As the day ended I couldn’t help feeling incredibly blessed by this community and how much we love each other. Don’t get me wrong some days community is really really hard. For example, when you want to go to bed you have to ask eight other peoples permission to turn off the light, or if you want to call your parents you have to find three other people to go with you to get wifi, some days finding a quiet space or time to be alone seems impossible, and honestly, you can still feel lonely even while surrounded by forty other people. But you love them. Some days I don’t even know why, but if I don’t see one of my teammates all day I actually miss them, or it hurts like a gunshot to your heart when one of your squad-mates goes home and you know you may never see them again. You will serve them and do anything to make them feel loved: like bring them Pan de Yuca because it’s their favorite or washing their dish because you know they are exhausted or writing them a note because they had a bad day and you know that words of affirmation is their love language. Valentine’s Day simply illustrated in an obvious way how much we all truly love each other, even when it isn’t ideal we are a family. Each one of us was called by Christ and so we really are brothers and sisters, but at the same time, we all had to choose it. Believe me, you can go the entire World Race and not know the person you shared a room with for the last nine months, but when you do choose to love someone despite the fact that they always leave the door open when you want to sleep, or they smack when they eat, or that they tease you, or whatever is… you know that love comes from the Father and it is something so much stronger than just loving the person who is easy to love. We all chose each other and that’s what made it so so easy to celebrate one another.
Thank you A Squad for loving me despite my weaknesses and flaws. Thank you for embracing me as a sister in Christ and showing me how to love each of you well. Thank you for teaching me to love you even when sometimes it’s hard and always pointing me back to the Father. I love you all so deeply and am extremely grateful to call you mine.
Love,
Ash 😉
