As this month approached, our squad was anticipating team changes.
I love WILDroots so much and have been incredibly blessed by each member… but I also really like change.
We lived and loved together for 4 months, and we were comfortable together. Community living became almost as easy as breathing – which is all good and nice – but with comfort and ease also tends to come stagnation, which was the last thing I wanted for my race, my life, and my walk with God. I was VERY excited to live with, serve alongside, be challenged by, and get to know other squadmates of mine on a deeper level.
I greatly desired all the things that come from a new group of people – new personalities, new challenges, new perspectives, and a new dynamic. As much as I loved my team, I was bored.
They hadn’t continued to challenge and grow me like they did in the first few months as the race began, and I became discontent. Iron was no longer sharpening iron. I believed I had learned all the lessons I could learn from them, and that it was time to move on. I was ready.
Then, we received an email…
It read, “We know that change can be hard and we also know that sticking with something can be even harder.” And so with much prayer and contemplation, the decision was made to continue the race on the original teams we were put on at training camp for at least another three months. (That’s seven months total together – more than half the race.)
I was mad. I believed three more months with WILDroots would be fun and easy, but entirely lacking the growth and newness I so deeply wanted and needed.
A few days after getting the shocking news that no team changes were being made, one of our squad leaders, Mills, said something off-handedly that stuck with me. She said, “It’s crazy when you finally realize that literally everything in life is a choice. You can either let life happen to you or you can happen to life.”
I sat with that for a couple days.
Finally, I realized that I had been relying on and waiting for my team to challenge me, encourage me, grow me, and push me into new experiences and new places with the Lord when all along I have had the ability to choose all those things for myself.
Yes, my race, my walk, and ultimately my life is highly influenced by the people that directly surround me, but it is in no way dependent on them.
This concept seems so simple and obvious, but I’m realizing just how natural it is for me to slip into a passive lifestyle, allowing myself to just go with the ebb and flow of life and allowing my circumstances to influence me more than I influence them.
Yes, I chose to leave school to come on the race, but that choice only carried me so far. Everyday on the race I have to continue choosing what I want, what I need, and what the Lord desires of me so that I don’t get caught up in someone else’s current or the current of the world.
Since understanding and embracing this, I have boldly taken ownership of my race, my walk, and my life. I’ve asked myself, what it is that I truly want? What do I desire of my team? Of myself? Who do I want to be? What big dreams has the Lord placed on my heart that only I can pursue? What am I going to do about it?
It is incredible how much more meaningful and powerful the steps you take become when you choose them, rather than getting pushed, bumped, dragged, or asked into them. Not only do you begin to go directly in the direction you desire for yourself, you become someone who begins seriously impacting yourself and your world.
Now fast forward a week or so when we were given more surprising news.
We found out that our beloved teammate and former leader, Bekah, was being removed from our team to fulfill her newly determined role as a raised up squad leader, bringing our team of six down to a grieving, Bekah-less five.
Again, I was mad at the decision that determined who would or wouldn’t surround me. Bekah was one of my closest teammates, my workout partner, and she perfectly filled the role of a playful, pestering sibling whom I have missed. Not only was I not getting the new team I was expecting, I was losing a valuable and precious part of the team I had. Bitterness hung in my heart.
Thankfully, the Lord was already preparing me to receive another piece of wisdom.
As he has been teaching me about living a life of choice, he has also been revealing to me what it means to step into a prophetic life. The two go hand in hand. Let me explain.
(A prophetic life is simply one that declares and walks in the words God has spoken, written, or revealed. The Lord has taught me a lot about prophecy this month, which I can’t wait to share about in a later blog.)
At debrief the following week, Isaiah 43:18-19 was prophesied (or declared) over our entire squad. In it, God says to his people, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” In other words, God is saying, “Don’t limit yourselves or me to the way things have been in the past. I am a limitless God who is doing something new, something that has never been done before.”
We were encouraged to step into this prophesy by recognizing that we are a different team consisting of entirely different members. We are not the same people who arrived in Sielmat, India on October 6th. The Lord has and is indeed doing new things in us.
We also were asked to give ourselves a new team name that casts a vision for who we want to be and what direction the Lord wants to take us in these next few months.
We asked Beks to pray and ask the Lord for a new team name for us, and here is what she came up with: Echo.
The dictionary definition is, “to resound, reflect, or reverberate.” We want to reflect the character and love of Christ.
In Greek, the word means, “to have the ability or to be able” – how fitting for what God has been teaching me about choice. We want to use this ability we have been given to make choices that bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, starting with ourselves, then our team, the church, and finally the rest of the world.
This is what we are choosing, embracing, and stepping into. We trust the Lord’s sovereignty and plan above our own and desire to reflect him in all things. We are eager and expectant for the things he has planned for this divinely chosen team that he alone is knitting closer together to go higher, deeper, and further with him!
…
Update of what we have been up to this month:
Team Echo has taken Molepolele, Botswana. We spent the first few weeks of this month working at a BOCAIP (Botswana Christian Aids Intervention Program) daycare for vulnerable children in the surrounding areas, meaning children who come from low-income homes that have no parents, a mentally ill parent, or other familial struggles. This daycare teaches, cares for, and feeds the kids in ways their families simply cannot. I have had such an incredible time working alongside the teachers and staff, loving on these kids. My heart melted daily with them.
This past week, we ventured out to Ranaka Village, where we lived with a retired pastor and farmer’s wife and family. After meeting the village chief, we went about praying, preaching, and singing in the health clinic, the schools, and village offices. We trudged through the rain, had spontaneous ninja battles with some primary school students on the way home from school, and danced on the porch to Omy’s top hit, “Take me to new heights,” until stars covered the sky with our new African friends. It was a really great last week in Botswana.
Sam wrote a beautiful blog depicting our time in Ranaka Village and telling about the sweetest woman in the world whom we grew to love. You can read it here!
South Africa here we cooooooome!
