You probably read that title and thought “oh brother, this one sounds like a Limited Too ad about the new dazzling daisy lipgloss they’re promoting.” Ha, jokes on you, It IS the summer campaign for our new dazzling daisy lip gloss product, only $4.99 and ladies!!! Come quick, lip gloss is limited at Limited Too!! Yeah, NO. Far from a lip gloss ad. The complete opposite, so let’s just get on with it;
Glitter.
Oh glitter,,,,
raise your hand if you love glitter. Glitter everything; glitter on toast. glitter on deserts, dazzling daisy Limited Too lip gloss, glitter. Me. up.
Hands down
Now, raise your hand if you hear glitter and you think “oh cool glitter” appropriate for concerts, pep rallys, halloween, and occasional football games. Glitters cool here and there but you don’t go somewhere and think to bring glitter along.
Okay, hands down.
Now for you people, Raise your hand if you hear glitter and immediately think, black cats, horror films, clowns, no chick fil a for the rest of your life, and all
things bad, capital B. It sticks to everything, and stays there forever.
Cool, now that I can clearly see your hands in the air at the answer you chose and have a good idea of who my blog audience consists of, I’ll go on and continue.
Personally, I’m more of a buy a tube of glitter, keep it in my car at all times, just in case of emergencies, and take it on trips with me everywhere I go, type gal. Not so much glitter toast, that’s extreme, Ha. In that case, being the glitter gal I am, I of course grabbed my tube of glitter from my car before I left for training camp and put it in the front pouch of my day back so it’s easy to grab and super accessible.
With that, glitter and its importance. Day four rolls around and with every day came a new sleeping scenario, this day consisted of, community tents. 10-12 people in a tent, to sleep with, allll night long no matter how loud they could be and how much they talk at 1 a.m. when you’re trying to sleep (I am so sorry Camel). Everyone’s doing good, runnin a little low on fumes because of all that we’d been taking in from hours worth of sessions. So I decide to spice things up a little. I run over to my day pack and slip my hand into the front pouch when BOOM, there it is, my little tube of glitter with a hot pink top to keep all of the sparkles contained. “HEY, DOES ANYONE WANT TO PLAY WHAT ARE THE ODDS!!!” I scream across our campsite so no one misses out on this once in a lifetime opportunity. I get a few of those 3rd candidate people who correlate glitter with clowns and no chick fil a forever, who are totally opposed to me, holding a bottle of glitter. They don’t even know the rules yet but I got a hard no right off the bat.
As I walk around a little longer asking people if they wanna play what are the odds I stumble upon my good ol pal of mine; Kelly Loughran. What a trooper she is. Kell, this one’s for you; I explain the rules letting her know that if we guess the same number in the set of 1-10, the handful of glitter I’ve got goes all over her sticky sweaty face. She agrees, under the sole circumstance that if we don’t guess the same number, we cut the numbers down to 1-5 and if we guess the same number, I’d have to take the glitter all over my face. 3,2,1… We guess different numbers. “Shoot Das come onnnnn.” We cut it down 1-5, a good pal counts us down – 3,2,1 we both say 3. Oh man, I lost, “Das, how do you lose your own game” “It’s okay, you know a little part of you wanted to play this game for the sole purpose that somehow you’d end up with glitter on your face, just take it.” So I did, I held my breath and next thing ya know, I looked like a human dazzling daisy lipgloss from Limited Too. A few seconds goes by when I decide that Kell should be in this with me, I go down, we go down together. After all we are a family. I grab some more glitter and S P R E A D it alllllll over her face, like glitter on toast, or butter, whatever you like best. Mmm mm good. Dazzling Daisy Lipgloss Dasia and Guy Diamond Kelly (the glitter troll from the trolls movie) take on World Race Training Camp 2017. Let’s get it boys. To say the least, we got a ton of laughs, weird looks, and convinced majority of the people at camp that we had no clue we had any glitter on our face at all, just to see the reactions and the laughs come from it. Sorry pals,love you all. Definitely spiced things up that day. (guy diamond aka Kelly pictured way below)
After Kelly n I had our fun and got a few other people on the glitter train including our bros Hunter Miller and Andrew Lilly, and a gal pal of ours; Thyme Phillips, only 5 of us out of 300+ people on campus had glitter on us at all. A day or two pass and I begin to see glitter EVERYWHERE. I kid you not, on everyone from the guitar players leading worship, to our squad leaders and mentors, sprinkled all on the street, and through the community tents, on people I’d never spoken to, to people I hung out with most, on shampoo bottles in the places we took our bucket showers, I saw it everywhere. When alllll of a sudden, it hit me. Just like glitter. That’s how we as people need to spread the love, just like glitter.
The Lord loves us, despite our past mistakes, despite the things we do or say to hurt one another, His grace is an ocean and we’re all sinking, He loves us deeply, no matter where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we’re going. Because that’s the kind of dad we have. A good, good father. He loves us so deep and so well, we’ve got so much love how could we NOT sprinkle it, just like glitter. Everyone we meet, everyone we encounter is just as worthy of love as we are. And you’ve got it, from the creator of the stars in the sky, sprinkle it.
Grocery clerks, teachers, police officers, bank tellers, your friends, family, your dogs, they are all deserving of love. I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve been given something you knew you didn’t deserve, but whoever gave you that very thing, KNEW you WERE deserving of it, no matter how you saw yourself in that situation, undeserving and unworthy, they still saw you with different eyes. Everyone deserves to be looked at with different eyes. Not just “Mick that works at apple, Mick that fixes our phones and knows all the answers to our silly technology questions deserves LOVE” not just “Joe the plumber that suctions the nasties out of our toilet, but the Joe that deserves LOVE for suctioning the nasties out of our toilet.” We must love, like the Lord loves US!!!! We’ve gotta take our love, everywhere we go, and give it out to people on the streets, people that are overlooked and underappreciated. Sometimes, we can feel unworthy of love, and it’s not a good place to be, THIS WE KNOW, yet we still resist loving on people who may be a little more difficult to love on, or “why show my appreciation for them, they just bag my groceries.” People, that’s the point, if they weren’t there to bag your groceries, WHO WOULD??
Love looks like a lot of different things, a hug, a friendly smile, a genuine “have a nice day,” love varies. Like cereal, pillows, and clothes love comes in different flavors, colors, shapes and sizes. I’m not asking you to bake cookies for every neighbor in your neighborhood, i’m asking for some warm smiles, genuine thank you’s and patience. We could all use some of that. Take these things with you everywhere you go, and leave them in places you wouldn’t expect to see them.
Because you just read this, you now know I am alive & well after finishing up World Race Training camp, and I’ve taken a few days to reflect on what the Lord did in my heart over the last 11 days. Not only was I able to get to know how love and glitter correlate, I learned a lot about the hearts of the people around me. I was able to laugh, cry, bucket shower the glitter off (for the most part), and eat some pretty bizarre foods with people I’m about to spend the next nine months of my life with. My spirit is full, my heart is happy and I’m oh so confident in all of the people I had the privilege of doing life with for the last 11 days. INCREDIBLE to say the least.
I loved every ounce of training camp, I loved suffering well in feelings I hadn’t felt in years. I loved experiencing the Lord move in ways I’d never seen before. I loved meeting my team and trying harder than ever to lower a hulahoop with just our pointer fingers (as frustrated as it made me) I loved it. Surprisingly loved the taste of crickets, and the way it felt waking up to 3 of my girls after sleeping 4 to a 1 person tent. I loved meeting people from different squads and knowing how they ended up in the exact spot I was at World Race training camp. I loved meeting my leadership team, my mentors, my coaches, and my new F A M I L Y. LOVE. I LOVE them. I loved late night bucket showers, and waking up in community tents to the sun golden orange peeking through the mesh windows. I loved brushing my teeth in the woods, sleeping in South Korea, playing in muddy puddles with some of my best friends, and so much more people. Everything was good about training camp. Even the hard stuff, losing squad wars was rough, fighting as a family while trying to make 45 people dance the same rhythm and beat with only an hour to explain it all, waking up to a sweet little scorpion in my tent, sweating so much to the point where you can see your shirt take a whole new shade because it’s now soaked in the loveliness of your body juices. I loved pushing myself and my squad mates during that hike when all we wanted to do was give up. Training camp was hard. I’m not by any means trying to glorify the T REX SIZED ANTS, the fact that a majority of camp got lice, the lil wasp buddies that decided to set their homes up in the same place we showered, and the blood, sweat, and tears poured into training camp. Again, it was HARD but I loved everything about being stretched thin, and finding comfort in all of the uncomfortable situations I faced.
I get it, for you third scenario people who really don’t like glitter, I get it makes people uncomfortable, I get loving on random people can be a little weird for some of you. I get that it sticks to everything and you can’t walk into a room without someone letting you know you’ve got a sparkle on your face, it can be uncomfortable and weird to say the least but everything in life can use a little bit of sparkle, and a whole lot of love. With that, it’s up to you, reading this, to sprinkle love – just like glitter.
