Feedback is a crucial part of the World Race culture. Honestly, the success of a team truly depends on how well they do feedback. Feedback was the one of the things that scared me the most about coming on the race. I quickly learned that if your teammates love you they will give you feedback because they want to see you grow and become a better Godly person. Since the beginning of my race my teammates have called out two things about myself that have truly caused me to evaluate who I am in Christ.
First, my teammates have noticed that I apologize way too much. I am constantly apologizing for any little thing. I apologize because I have a loud and sometimes annoying laugh, I apologize for other people’s actions, and I apologize for speaking my mind, and so on. My teammates are constantly telling me not to be sorry for being myself that the Lord delights in me.
The second thing that they have given me a lot of feedback on is one of my strengths that can easily turn into one of my greatest weaknesses. I love to serve others and I love to make people happy. I will be the first one to offer my help to anyone that needs it. I will rather have someone else be happy and comfortable than me because it truly warms my heart to see someone smile. There are a few problems with this and they are that I tend to not speak up when I want something because I figure someone else needs something more than I do. Also, I have a big problem with receiving gifts from other people. I don’t like when people tell me how nice it was of me to do something for them because I feel that I don’t deserve a gift for doing something nice for someone else.
The Saturday before we left for our debrief, we had a huge feedback session and my team leader asked that we each write feedback for each other. On Saturday both of the above issues were given to me again and I just smiled because I knew they were true. During my feedback my teammates collectively said that they thought that the reason it is so hard for me to receive gifts/words of affirmation yet so easy to give them is that I do not comprehend the love of God for me. That when I realized how loved I am by God then I can start to receive good things from others.
Last night during our time of worship I just sat there and thought about the feedback that has been given to me these last two months. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I still do not walk in freedom. My chains are the ones that I have put on myself. It has always been hard for me to feel like I deserved anything good, especially if it came from God. How can God who is great and mighty want to bless me when I am full of sin. The crazy thing is that I know that God has forgiven my sins; I know that God loves me. The problem is that I honestly do not know how to let him love me. For years I have put up walls and have put up this defense mechanism of constant apologizing and constant service of others. I thought that if I said sorry for every little thing and if I made everyone else happy than I can earn the love of God not necessarily the love of people. As those thoughts are running through my mind God just tells me to let him love me. I begin to cry like a baby and answer I don’t know how. I sit there face on the floor asking God to show me. He simply says just sit in my presence; delight in me because I delight in you. Those simple words wrecked me. I’m in this crazy process of learning my worth in Christ believing that he loves me and I deserve to be loved by others. I do not have to work to gain love or acceptance, I just need to be.
