I told myself I’d get this post written within a few days of returning home from training camp so that I didn’t forget anything important. Since my return last Saturday afternoon (about a week ago), I’ve spent a majority of my time on the couch due to a virus that decided to hitch a ride on my sinus cavity. Considering deep reflection upon the last ten days made me nauseated – this was the last thing I wanted to do while fighting an exhausting (yet temporary) illness. Please just let me watch Tarzan and drink Sprite in peace, am I right?
I’m taking a nose-dive into discomfort and writing this thing now because those ten days were more important than my desire to just sleep. Also, huge laughs at the idea that I could actually forget anything that happened at training camp. (#lifechanging)
Training camp was insane. Georgia is hot, dusty, and I’m still blowing red dirt out of my nose. It was hard. Relationships are a piece of WORK. It was constant; go, go, go. We never had time to rest until bedtime in our dirty little tent commune. But through the experience we grew into a family. We were pushed, pulled, moved and loved – forged into community. Friendships bloomed. Accountability formed. There was room for the Holy Spirit to convict and pursue us in ways we’d never experienced before. And we learned how to encourage one another into the sons and daughters that we were made to be.
I also learned I didn’t love myself.
Before camp I was wondering what the Lord would do with me to rock my world. I’d read the stories: “How Training Camp Changed My Life,” via alumni world racer blogs and I knew that it would be hard. I knew he had plans to wreck me of some sort of unbelief or lie about myself, I just wasn’t sure how it would manifest. One afternoon we were in group session and the speaker asked us to break apart and seek to hear from God. (Not vague at all.) I went outside and started writing in my journal, hoping to magically see some sort of obscure yet life-changing message straight from his right hand. In those moments I didn’t receive a verse. I didn’t get a “word” to stand on for the next segment of my journey into the mission field. Instead, He told me something I’d never heard before, and quite frankly, never thought I’d hear.
“You won’t be capable to love others until you let Me love you.”
Over the next week I submitted and gave up. Jesus and I dismantled my predispositions of what it looks like to “worship right”; we destroyed prior misconceptions I’d built of myself that I’m just “faking it”, I let God crush and diminish lies I’d believed about my walk with Him and my future. I opened my heart to the new plan, a fresh tomorrow through HIS eyes, and began to witness my own heart being transformed by faith and grace. It. is. beautiful. I can be proud to say I AM LOVED. I am redeemed. I am grace. I am faith. And I can LOVE, because He loves me.
Being home for about a week now I’ve felt more protected than ever. As if all of those promises I heard and chose to accept as my guidebook through these next weeks before launch were written across my forehead. I’m learning to walk in the gift of faith that has so graciously scouted my every step since grace took my hand and swept me off the ground. My heart is excited beyond belief at what’s to come of the next five weeks before we launch into Serbia. I’ve felt a calming peace about leaving that I never could’ve imagined. I get to receive love from the Father, feel it rushing through me, and give it to others. And the best part of it is, I didn’t just make 41 new life-long friends I get to travel the globe with… I made 42.
“You’ve got a friend in me.” – Jesus
