This is the final blog of a three part series. The initial posts are found here: World World Racer Uprooted: Part 1 and World Racer Uprooted: Part 2
Going into the race I didn’t even know I had any roots. Garden looks pristine, right? After spending seven months with a group of people though, those roots are bound to start surfacing sooner or later. And when they do, it’s best not to wait around until month seven to dig up the thing that’s popping up from the dirt. It just gets bigger the longer you wait. (…do you hear ringing? mom, is that you??)
When this conflict stuff started happening in our team I thought we’d get by with time. I thought we could try to talk it through, resolve it up with a big nice bow, but that wasn’t the case. I think fester might be the word that accurately describes what happened instead. Yes fester, like a big festering wound. And truly, wounds were the very start of it all, the place where the roots were able to hold on tight and hide under the surface for oh so long.
As it happened, I didn’t give my wounds a second thought; I knew it was his/her/their fault instead!! See how this weed shoots up quickly from the ground? As things started spiraling out of control (ah, there’s that control) I lost it. Completely lost it. Lost my control of the team, myself, everything that was going on. (turns out I never had control of any of those things, which was good because then I didn’t have to feel so bad about all the spiraling.) The thing that really turned this whole thing around for me was a good bit of advice from our leadership.
At one of our debriefs the topic was team conflict (go figure) and they told us that when we find ourselves in conflict we need to spend more time looking at what is in
us that reacts and less time looking at
them and blaming. At the time I thought it was good advice, sure, heard it before, sounds good, took the notes, whoo hoo, on to the next seminar. Next thing you know I found myself out in the field with my little team in a bit of a conflict. And what perchance do you think my reaction was? Yeah, you never learn the lesson by taking notes. You usually write it down, stow it away somewhere and then get into the thick of it and then have to recall that deep hidden entry and apply it to life. It’s that application that always hammers it home, isn’t it? (ugh.)
I started asking God to reveal if there was anything in me that had to change, sorta as a whim, thinking nothing would really surface because of that little prayer. I really actually believed that I didn’t have much of anything to do with it. How many times do we think it’s not my problem, it’s
their issue, when all along that issue’s roots are growing stronger in you each day.
It’s quite convicting actually when God answers that prayer. When he starts going after those strong roots in your life only because you asked him to. He’s not going to go out and weed until you let him. When I opened that door to him he uprooted that sucker quick and I can tell you it wasn’t really the most fun experience of my life. It hurt. It wasn’t fun. Hard things were said and feelings were exposed and the shit hit the fan…literally…there’s never been as much cussing in a team meeting before on record, I can guarantee you that. But you know, at the end of it all, the full cycle of the thing is that there is healing, there is growth, there is fruit.
Think about it, there would be no harvest of a garden left to fester and produce nasty weeds. There just wouldn’t be any fruit because the weeds would have completely taken over, but a garden that yields a crop is the kind you want. I love heading to the garden and eating fresh peas and beans off the stalk. Spinach and carrots and potatoes and onions…all these things I can almost taste my family eating right now back home. Fresh veggies from the garden just can’t be beat; I don’t care where you’re from.
Fruit is what we want in our lives and we can’t fully get there unless we weed out those deep roots in our hearts. They’re there, hidden away within you even now as you read this, but they can be uprooted. They can be pulled out and tossed aside forever. The weeds don’t have to grow. By asking God to reveal these things in us and really allowing him to go there (yes
there!), we’ll find freedom and discover who we really are. Who we are minus the junk, minus the stuff we hate about ourselves but seem to never be able to get rid of, minus the lies, minus the weeds and the roots that run so deep. It’s the fruit we’re after, the changes that makes us who we are, who we were meant to be, who we are fully alive.
The process isn’t all daisies and roses, but the result really is.
