So much happened at training camp that I could write a book. However, to spare you, I will be writing a series of blogs about what happened to me while at The World Race Training Camp!!!
I know that it has been one week since I got home, but please bear with me. I’m still trying to process the crazy, life-changing week that I had.
Ever since I was a little girl in elementary school, I was bullied. I was overweight for my age/height and I was an introvert. I wasn’t one of the “popular” kids. I didn’t have blonde hair or great athletic ability. In fact, I was quite the klutz. I enjoyed reading and math when other kids loved recess. I was the first one to volunteer to help the teacher; I was the epitome of a teacher’s pet.
When I was in third grade, the ostracism worsened. A new girl split our class into the “cool” and the “not cool.” I fell squarely in the not cool circle. She eventually left the school a couple years later, but it didn’t matter, the damage was done. Not only had the rest of my classmates, girls and boys both, believed that I wasn’t good enough to be their friends, I believed it. I was still a math nerd and could read a book in less than a day. I didn’t have the athletic prowess that most of the girls did and I wasn’t interested in the same things that the cool kids liked. I didn’t have the traditional beauty that boys sought after; therefore, I figured that I wasn’t beautiful. I had enough self-esteem to know that I wasn’t ugly, however, I wouldn’t have put myself much higher up than that on the beauty scale.
As the years passed, I slowly withdrew back into myself, not allowing anyone to love me. Even years later, I still believed that I wasn’t worthy of love. I am still overweight and I have adult acne, not the beautiful stunner that I see in other girls. I knew that I didn’t deserve it from friends, no matter how much love they poured out on me. I knew my family only loved me out of obligation; I am linked to them through blood after all. And God could never love me, this was complete fact to me. I knew all of this, until training camp.
That is when God turned my view of love and beauty on its head. I got to training camp and was trying to put forth my best effort at accepting these people as the people I would be living with for the next year. I knew they couldn’t love me, they didn’t know me yet. However, I was trying to keep an open mind. But goodness, the love that poured out of them onto me was unlike anything I had ever seen!! I had known these people for less than a few hours and already they were saying that they loved me and that I was beautiful. WHAT?!?!?! Only my mom had ever told me that I was beautiful. (Sorry if anyone else has and I didn’t register it because I didn’t believe it to be true) What they didn’t know is that this is exactly what I needed to hear. I needed the love that could only come from our Father, but I didn’t want to accept it from Him. Of course He knew that I would accept it from people who were practically strangers.
The second day of Training Camp, we dealt with grief and loss. Not the kind that deals with death, but grief that accompanies lost opportunities. I had a lot of grief that I hadn’t dealt with after being bullied in elementary school. That day my amazing Squad Leader, Dura, asked if I had ever forgiven them for the grief that their bullying caused me. I knew that I hadn’t. Every time I thought of that time in my life, there was bitterness. By holding onto my bitterness for my former classmates, I was robbing myself of the ability to receive love. After having me forgive my former classmates as if they were in front of me, I felt this weight lift off of my shoulders. I was free to receive love. I was free to view myself through a different set of eyes: the eyes that my Daddy sees me through. I WAS FREE!!
To my former classmates if you are reading this: I have forgiven you.
On a lighter note, here are a couple videos that my squadmates put together about training camp!!
