“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
If you don’t know what your’e doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help , and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who
worry their prayers are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.”
James 1:2-8
Now for the break down!!
The last two weeks, well six months really, have been just that “when tests and challenges come at you from all sides”, but these last two weeks especially.
After my week at training camp I KNEW coming back home was going to be HARD. Because that week at training camp I understood why the road to get, JUST there, just to training camp, lets not even mention the actual Race yet!! Has been some of the roughest and challenging months of my life. But after camp I understood why the devil had played with my mind and life so. Why he had tried to discourage me from boarding that plane out of Hartford CT air port that would take me to Georgia Atlanta. Because myself and two hundred something other racers were about to start the journey of truly unraveling our selves to the healing power of all mighty Jesus!
That week has already changed and effected me. That week I saw for the first time in my life the Kingdom. The Kingdom at work.
That week I formed bonds deeper and quicker then I’ve ever experienced in my life. And thats because they are bonds formed in the sister hood and brother hood of Christ. They are bonds made by the kingdom.
And HEALING the most beautiful and precious part of my experience there.
The second night there God began this healing process. That night the spirit came on me and all I felt was grief, deep, deep grief. Heavy grief, that knocked me to my knees. And all I could do was cry. I’m not a cryer, but God was/is certainly making me one (Now this does NOT mean I sob uncontrollably every time someone shares something sentimental, or tells me about the squirrel they ran over on their way to my house!! In fact I’m a very unsentimental person, I have a HUGE amount of empathy but not much sentiment).
Thursday night is when it happened though. Thursday night is when He took this VERY skeptical heart and mind and said “I AM”.
“Colleen, I AM”
Thursday night is when so many of the walls I’ve built started crumbling down (you can ask the poor girl who’s shoulder’s I covered with my snot and salted tears. And after she finished praying over me and went to give me a hug, I told her “I’m so sorry I have snot all over my face I can run to the bathroom and whip it off”, she just laughed with me and said “Oh girl I’ve cried snot and tears over so many shoulders it doesn’t matter”, and hugged me anyways. Thats not word for word, but you get the idea). I wish I could say that all my walls came down that night, but they didn’t. Thats God’s grace I know, because if they had I think I would have went into shock!! Also for some of these walls I haven’t finished walking the path that needs to be walked in order to reach that place of healing. But I want it!!
I have never danced or rejoiced more freely in my life then I did that night. “To loose yourself in Him”, just became so much realer to me!!
And I’m so excited to dance like that with the peoples of the world or anyone who wants to with me!
But can you maybe now see too, why the enemy fought so desperately to keep me from this. This is just a small part of what I experienced in that week. This is why I knew coming back home was going to be so much HARDER.
And it has been. I don’t have time to get into the details right now and if you’ve read this far I’m not sure you would want me to lol, this is a pretty long post!
But I will say this! I know that life, and the stresses it produces, our circumstances and situations we are put into can never always be ideal or the way we want them, but if we have peace and assurance within ourselves from the love of God and Christ life in us, we can most certainly deal with these things and actually find joy in them. It is these very unwanted situations that can shape within us a strength and ability to love deeper out of a truer understanding and insight for others, out of a deeper understanding because we have walked through it too.
SO if your fighting something, discouraged, broken, hurting or whatever it is that is making life hard for you to face take heart, be encouraged, surrender what ever it is that needs to be surrendered.
That passage up at the beginning of this post has too, become so much REALER to me, and I take comfort from it. I hope you will as well.
Literally a “couple” more pics from training camp! 
