Popping Pimples in a Port-A-Potty: An Ode to Training Camp by Brittni Wisner
World Race Training Camp.
Small, cracked mirrors and dirt for days
Somehow show me more.
Okay, so that’s not an “ode”—that’s a botched haiku—but I’ll work on some lyrics and let you know how the rest of it goes!
In case you didn’t know, Training Camp is 10 days of preparation that Adventures in Missions has us go through before we launch. I would even venture to say it is 10 days of slightly over-preparing us (I’m looking at you, Airport-From-Hell-Scenario) but I am so thankful for the way that AIM does preparation. There’s quite a bit of mystery surrounding Training Camp, and over the last 4 years I’ve wondered what it is about Training Camp that is so life-changing for Racers. I’d think to myself, “These people are about to travel to 11 countries to tell others about Jesus, don’t they already have all that deep/existential/revelation-y stuff put together by now?”
Friends, I just laughed so hard at Pre-TC Brittni that I nearly fell out of my chair (…which would be obnoxious because my body is still 4 hours ahead and 6 AM is not the time to be making unplanned exits from furniture)
Training Camp was 10 days long, but I would honestly believe you if you told me it was a month long. 10 months, even. I had no idea how much God can do with me when I give him the time and the space He hasn’t had before to teach me about things I hadn’t known before. Funny how that works, huh? Training Camp truly felt like its own season of my life. I know that sounds crazy because it was “only” 10 days, but this was a 10-day season of intense truth, light, healing, and challenge.
…OR, as our Training Team would say, a 10-day season of “all the things” 🙂
Preparation looked like going to hard physical, emotional, and spiritual places. Preparation looked like showering with a bucket and a measuring cup, shamelessly eating other squad’s mealtime leftovers over a trashcan while on clean-up duty, and somehow becoming unfazed by the smell of 300 other sweaty campers in one room(a normal conversational exchange: “I’m sorry, I probably smell so bad” “I don’t know what this says about me but I really can’t smell you.”) Preparation also looked like sharing parts of my story and pressing into things that hurt, interrogating my own thoughts, and learning what grace and freedom really mean to me.
There were the practical things I learned, like the lesson that showering is kind of a team sport and requires strategy. Learning that I hate my sleeping pad. The life-changing revelation that either a) you’re a vampire from Twilight or b) the weird, sparkly dirt you live in (and actually breathe) is literally never going to come off of your body. Learning to wear the same things 3 days in a row and be totally fine with it. Eating off of tables. Thinking about what you would do for a cup of coffee.
In the context of sleep deprivation, continually sweating through my clothes, and adjusting to scheduled, smaller portions than I’m used to, there was breakthrough that happened for me in my spiritual life: God took me to hard places, and the result was freedom. I was lead to reconsider two areas of my spiritual life: what I considered to be truth and what I considered to be my identity. I know that in the past, my eyes sometimes glazed over at those words: I know what that means, next topic please.
But taken to a space with room to sit and press further into pain that I experience in these areas, I realized that I drastically needed to reconsider what I believe to be true—and how what I think manifests in my responses to and ideas of God. There were things that I realized I’d been believing about God that I hadn’t been aware of—and those things were lies. I realized that I’d been believing and acting on the lie that God is unfair and far from me. In regards to pain from my past, I projected indifference and untrustworthiness onto Him. I was challenged to take that lie captive as I realized that it made me believe that I could not trust God to bring joy and beauty to my life, that I couldn’t fully trust God with my heart and desires because He might take it away. I had to take that lie captive and submit it to the truth about Him—that He is good, perfect in purpose and His plans, that He heals. Over and over I had to proclaim His goodness over areas of my life that I hadn’t fully accepted as redeemed and rebuke the lies of Satan that told me otherwise; these lies tell me that He is not a Healer and Redeemer. One of the worship songs we sang, “King of My Heart,” led me to these proclamations. Each time I sang “You are good,” at the top of my lungs I was speaking my belief in the Lord’s goodness in parts of my life I hadn’t thought that He had been good and sovereign in. Until Training Camp, I’d never experienced worship as a battle for life, but that’s the intensity with which I felt I was fighting for the truth. Through this proclaiming, and through the continual teaching from Courtney (a woman on my Training Team), one of the most powerful things I learned was the power of speaking life and not death—the absolute importance of taking captive every thought, submitting it to God’s truth, light, and absolute authority, and then speaking that truth into myself and others. I learned that I must identify lies, ask God about them, and then speak His life into death. I’m still learning to walk this out, but at Training Camp I started to discipline myself to speak truth and life into lies, darkness, and pain.
Naturally, what I believed to be true about myself and God influenced what I considered to be my identity. God showed me the truth about my identity. God is full, and He has perfectly and fully redeemed me. It is a lie to believe otherwise. On the very first night during worship, a light was shone on my identity, and I realized that I wasn’t living in belief in the fullness of my identity. In the light, cracks were revealed.
“You chase me down.
You seek me out.
How could I be lost when You have called me Found?”
The question rang in my heart even as I sang the words, and tears came to my eyes. Why do I believe that I am far? At the core of a new understanding of my identity was a refreshed understanding of grace. God extends grace—He doesn’t tell me to clean up first and then come to him. He tells me to come home and then He’ll wipe my tears and clean me up. I am a child of God. My freedom was bought with Jesus’ blood—He said that my life was worth the cost of his death. God moved Heaven and Earth for my ability to call Him Father—to come to Him when I am hurting, angry, happy, or even “in trouble.” I am a beloved daughter. He won’t let me be a slave—that’s not what He’s asking for. He calls me daughter. I am not a slave to fears of rejection. I am not a slave to the fear that one day God will not want me or change His mind about walking with me. And I do not have to grapple for of grasp after my identity as I so often have, driven by the fear that I am inadequate and the lie that the Spirit would in my life. I am a daughter. I am secure in this identity, even when/if it feels insecure. I rest in and do not grasp for His presence- He’s here. I am only called Found. My mistakes will never and can never change God’s invitation of grace. Nothing can separate me from the love of God that is in Jesus.
In one session, we were practicing listening prayer, where we prayed and asked God if He had a word or truth for anyone. After praying in my group, my squadmate Geneva looked at me and told me that God had given her a word for me. “God is telling me to tell you, ‘Be free.’”
Be free.
She didn’t know that earlier in the week, I’d journaled about being imprisoned by an unforgiving heart toward myself, of being a slave to my fears of inadequacy and rejection. God used Geneva to tell me to be free from slavery to these fears, to be free from my unforgiving heart. To be free in the complete grace that is given to me in Jesus: “You are found and free. I died to make it so.” His whole, perfect redemption is my SOLE identity. And I will rest in it.
I left Training Camp grounded in the truth about my identity in a way that I hadn’t felt. I left Training Camp with lots of sparkly dirt on me, a backpack full of smelly, dirty clothes, and an intense excitement for a hazelnut mocha. But I also left free—and with even more fire to bring that freedom to the nations.
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Thank you to everyone who prayed for me during this intense time. This is a look into the personal part of TC for me, so keep your eyes out for Part 2 that I’ll be posting about the bigger picture regarding my squad and I at Training Camp!
