Expectations are a funny thing. You know when you go into something having painted a picture in your head of exactly what it would look like and then none of that actually happens? That was pretty much my experience at training camp.
I’m pretty sure I thought I would go into this thing with guns blazing and come out being like “training camp was amazing and here is what I learned and walked through and was freed from and now I feel super light and also just super sure of a lot of things life is good huzzah.” Yeah, that’s not at all what happened.
I’ve wrestled with the idea of blogging about training camp because I honestly don’t know what to say. Don’t get me wrong, I loved training camp and I actually am able to articulate a few things that I know God freed me from and walked me through and talked to me about…I just know those aren’t the things that I’m supposed to be honest about. As much as I want to just talk about the things that make sense, I know I would end up hiding the fact that I’m actually a huge mess right now. I know the thing I need to talk about is the thing that I don’t understand, which is how I left training camp with way more questions than answers…the main question being “God, what the heck are you doing?”
The part of me that is annoyingly self-aware was pretty excited about the idea of being able to go home and be alone to process and talk to God about everything so that I could come to some sort of understanding and conclusion, because usually that’s what I’m good at. Instead, I haven’t been able to focus on anything or even be able to think straight.
I ended up getting pretty sick when I got home so I’ve had to take off work. I was actually excited about this because I’ve learned that’s sometimes God’s way of slowing me down and forcing me to rest. I was all like “Okay great, God obviously wants me to just stay at home and have all the hours to process everything and figure everything out.” Instead, I’ve ended up having the worst sinus headache, which has left me feeling super out of it and unable to think clearly about anything at all. Yeah…again with the expectations.
I got to the point where I just felt completely defeated. I finally got to the point where I used up all my strength and just cried and felt my walls go down in front of Him, letting go of this false idea that my own strength will ever get me anywhere in life…and that’s when I finally had the ears to hear His response. He just said “I’m purposefully not telling you right now. I want you to know that it is okay to be confused and it is okay to not understand. I want you to sit in the fact that you don’t have anything figured out and truly know that I am so in love with you in spite of it. If you understood what was going on then you wouldn’t need to trust me and I want to stretch your trust in me because I want more of your heart than you’re willing to give on your own. You may not know what’s happening, but I know what’s happening. I want you to stop trying to protect your heart and just allow it to feel the things it feels and welcome me into that place, knowing that I am taking care of you no matter what you see or feel or think you may know. Your job isn’t always to understand.”
I’ve put so much emphasis on processing and putting all my time and energy into trying to figure everything out and come to some sort of understanding that I’ve completely missed God’s response to my questions solely because His response isn’t the response that I was looking for. I’ll be honest in saying that it’s still not the response that I want and I’m definitely still not at the point where I’m okay with not seeing what’s happening, but I also know He’s right. There’s so much beauty in the unknown and so much beauty in being okay with being a mess. It’s in the moments that I’ve been the most honest and the most raw that I have been able to receive the most love and I honestly don’t know why we fight so hard against that. I’ve heard Him say “I know that you know that I love you, but I also want you to learn how to love yourself.” So here’s to using this year to try to figure out what that looks like.
