Happy holidays everyone!! Well, as most of you already know, I’m home. Feel free to reach out to hear the whole story, but our squad had some issues with Covid and AIM decided it would be best to have us stay home after Thanksgiving instead of returning to campus. So our week off for Thanksgiving turned into six weeks with very little notice. This has been quite an adjustment for sure, but my two weeks in quarantine gave me a lot of time to process my time in Gainesville. I’ve been trying to figure out how to best express three months of intense, spiritual growth, and I finally decided to go with the classic list. So here we go – the top 10 things I learned while living in Gainesville.
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Vulnerability is key
Y’all, I’m not a crier, I’m not a sappy person. I avoid my feelings at all costs, and I’ve always hated expressing what I’m going through. And honestly, it’s still definitely not one of my favorite things. But I did learn the importance of being vulnerable and opening up to those around you so they can love you well. After being around the same people constantly for three months straight, I found that if I’m in a mood, my team is gonna realize it. And they can’t help me when I need it if I don’t open up and express what I’m feeling. And there is no shame in having feelings, which leads us right into the next point.
- Shame has no place
The enemy loves shame. He loves bringing up our past, the things we wouldn’t choose to do again, and rubbing them right in our face. And when I first got to Georgia, I planned on hiding these things. A lot of us did. But we soon realized that when you hold onto your shame, determined to never let it surface, it’s just dragging you down. The Lord has already forgiven you, He’s redeemed you of your past. You just need to surrender that to Him, let it go, and start living in the freedom of being a child of God. And we’re all going to mess up, none of us are perfect. But the only thing that’s going to separate you from the Father is if you make the choice to run and hide in your shame.
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Your clothes aren’t dirty until you can smell yourself
Okay this is a bit of a silly one. But after hand washing my clothes for three months, I realized that my past definition of dirty clothes needed to change. If I washed my clothes every time I wore them once or twice, I would both run out of clothes and spend hours doing laundry. Clothes got a bit smelly in between washes when it was hot, but as it cooled down the few weeks leading up to leaving I could get away with wearing the same outfit all week, mayyybe putting on a new shirt halfway through if I was feeling fancy. And don’t even get me started on my running clothes.
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Living in community can be so, so good
I wasn’t sure how to feel about living in a community of 40 people before coming on the race. I like my alone time, and with that many of us and only so many places to go on campus, I was doubtful. But I quickly learned to love our little community. When I tell you my squad is amazing, I mean it. We have our musicians, our artists, our hair stylists, our photographers, our athletes, our comedians, you name it. If I needed to talk about a specific topic, there was someone who knew just what to say. If I didn’t know how to do something, there was someone who did. If I was having a certain issue I thought no one would understand, someone had been right where I was and could help me. And every single person was a beautiful example of what it looks like to be a child of God.
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Living in community can be so, so hard
The word ‘hard’ here has two meanings. Okay, yes, obviously there were moments when I just wanted to talk to someone, anyone, who wasn’t on my squad. I would be craving a change of scenery, and wanted someone new to talk to who I hadn’t seen everyday for the past 90 days. So there were challenging moments, but I learned to take it to the Lord. Living in community was also hard because we weren’t afraid to call each other out. And this was so, so good. We knew how to challenge each other, how to push each other, how to make each other grow. And this can be painful and scary and hard, but the benefits you reap are well worth it.
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Real life whack-a-mole is quite thrilling
All I’m gonna say here is we had some moles that liked to come and visit under our tents in the middle of the night, and I happened to bring a rubber mallet with me.
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Make time to spend with God
Okay I honestly didn’t realize how important this was until I went to Gainesville. We had devos each morning, but I’d also make a point to use some of my free time, get up early, or stay up later so I could have quiet time with the Lord. And we had Sabbath on the weekends to use our time as we wanted. Let me tell ya, I could tell when I didn’t use that time wisely. During the week, I would feel less joyful, more self conscious, and just overall worse if I didn’t feel like I had spent enough time with God. And if I wasted my time on the weekends, it felt like I was just playing catch up all week. It took me a bit to realize the correlation between these things, but I learned that making time for the Lord is a huge key to my general happiness.
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God meets you where you’re at
Whew, this right here. If you take nothing else away from this blog, get this. We are all sinners. None of us are deserving of the Lord. But He loves us anyway. He loves you so freaking much that He sent His son to die for you. Yes, you. He wants a relationship with you more than you could ever imagine. There are no conditions to this type of love, no limits. He isn’t saying, “I’ll love you as soon as you stop doing this,” or “As soon as you start doing this.” No, He loves you despite anything you could ever do or not do. He is proud of you, jealous for you. The Lord just wants to love you, and if you feel like He doesn’t, it’s because you aren’t letting Him. This was tough for me to accept, to come to terms with the fact that I was pushing Him away. But I soon found that the Lord was standing right next to me, just waiting for me to surrender my life to Him. He meets you right where you are, and nothing will ever change that. And as soon as you accept it, nothing compares to the joy that comes from that.
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This is just a little bonus point to see if Keegan is reading this
But seriously, I did learn the importance of true friendship. I learned how much of a blessing it is to have a support system, to have people who love you, whether they are standing right next to you or are hundreds of miles away. So thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout this journey, and I can’t wait to see what the next five months have in store. And Keegan, thanks for being a great, weird friend who somehow keeps me sane.
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There are so many things to be grateful for
It never fails to amaze me how sheltered we can be. Mission trips are always eye opening and often life changing, even if only for the reason that they expose you to how other people live their lives. But I never expected to be as humbled as I was by my time in Gainesville. From the little things like having a washing machine to the big things like having a healthy home life, I was once again reminded of how blessed I am. Meeting the people I did and hearing their stories put so many things into perspective for me. I may not have had the stereotypical experiences of working with impoverished communities or orphaned children, but the Lord still wrecked me in such a good way. And I’m so grateful for that.
p.s. I will never again complain about having to get out of my comfy bed to go to the bathroom after walking to the porta potties from my tent in the woods as it poured down rain at 1am after I watched the Walking Dead.
So there ya have it! Thank you to whoever made it through that whole thing. I tried not to ramble too much, but believe me when I say I easily could’ve kept going. This time in Gainesville was absolutely life changing, and I am so excited to see what the Lord has in store for this next season. That being said, I want to announce that we officially found out where we are launching to in January…Costa Rica!! I’ll post a blog soon with some more details, but I cannot wait for this upcoming experience.
I’m trying to safely catch up with people since I’ve been home, so don’t be afraid to reach out to grab a cup of coffee or something! I’d love to share more about my time, and hear about what you’ve been up to during this weird season of life! Thank you guys for all of your support, and as always, I’d love to hear what I can be praying about for you.
With love,
Brook
