Four months. Four months have already passed on the race. Time is flying and I don’t know where it’s going. We finally made it to Botswana and it is hot hot hot. I think it hit 98 degrees yesterday.
So we just finished up our month 4 debrief in Victoria Falls with B squad as a whole (19 racers, 2 squad leaders,1 mentor and 2 coaches).
We have had debrief before so it felt very familiar coming together again.
This debrief wasn’t like any others though.
This debrief was a turning point in our race.
This debrief held the looming team changes.
This debrief was where the goodbyes to the people we had spent every living, breathing moment with for the last 4 months happened.
It would be easy to say that these goodbyes would be nothing and I’d be able to greet my new team with excitement and joy.
But I’d be lying to you if I said that.
(For the record that doesn’t mean I don’t love my new team.)
I was grieving. I had not a single desire in my body to say goodbye to the great thing that Team United had become.
Let me back up a little bit.
We struggled together..a lot.
Holy smokes sometimes those girls drove me absolutely nuts and sometimes I know that I drove them nuts too. At the end of the day though, there would be nowhere else or no one else I wanted to be with in that season of my life.
Before heading to Zimbabwe, our last month together, we prayed as a team for a word for the month.
The word God gave me for our team was battlefield. Ish. Try walking into a month with the word battlefield at your forefront. Talk about terrifying.
Over the course of the month I saw many things within our team that could be defined as a battlefield. I saw growth in each individual in ways that they had been fighting for in previous months.
I think the real battlefield though was facing the fact that at the end of the month, we would no longer be a team and we’d be going our separate ways.
Let me explain team changes, the World Race does a really good job at making sure we grow as individuals. To do this, they switch up our teams after a few months so that we can learn from new people and so that new people can learn from us.
The last four months, things were obviously changing all the time. The only constants that any of us really had was God and our team.
Do you know how hard it is to say goodbye to the people that you have spent nearly every moment with for the last 4 months? It’s almost like you really don’t have any solid ground to stand on except for in the presence of the Lord…that’s abandonment y’all.
It’s not the goodbyes that really hurt. I’ll see them again, I’ll see them at the end of the month actually.
No, it’s the fact that there will never be a season like this again. We will never have those moments back. They won’t always be the people that know me best in the world and maybe, just maybe I’ll be replaced in their lives.
Team United will always be our first team and we’ll be able to gather together again but we won’t always be the kind of community we once were..it’s the changing of the seasons.
So for now I’m saying goodbye, Team United. I wouldn’t be who I am today without your constant love, without the desire from each of you to help me grow and without all of the laughter that indeed made me pee my pants.
True confession to Team United: I know I told you differently for the last 4 months but I actually don’t prefer the butt of the bread… nobody actually likes crust that much.
Okay goodnight!
