About 1 month ago I ended my 10 day long training in Gainesville Georgia.
After ending camp I spent 11 days traveling around southern california with my friend and squadmate, Harlee. During that time I thought I was processing all that happened in those 10 days. I thought I had worked through my feelings. I thought I would be completely fine when I came home to Pennsylvania and that everything would simply go back to the way it was before. I was six weeks away from leaving the country. God wouldn’t change everything yet. He would wait for me to leave, right? Wrong.
Although training camp was only 10 days, The Holy Spirit was the most present in my life that it has ever been.
People ask me, “Did you have fun?”, “Did you learn?, “Would you do it again?”, and while the answer to all these questions would easily be a resounding “YES!”. One question still stumps me on a daily basis.
“What was it like?”…
Um.Well.I guess…
I scramble for the words to describe a life changing 10 days that led me down the beginning of an intense spiritual walk unlike one I had ever been on before.
Would they understand my heart? How do you describe the feeling of living in a community of believers for 10 days? How do you speak of the things you watched the Holy Spirit do in people’s lives? There seemed to be no words for anything. No words to communicate what my heart felt. People talk about how God changes individuals all the time. But seldom do you expect God to flip your life upside down and tell you to jump head first into what He has ahead of you.That’s exactly what Christ did for me.
I came home from California feeling fulfilled and ready for the next step that God had in store. But then life got hard. I came home to an empty house. My sister had moved back to college. My cousins had all went back to work in their various states. My parents had to put our dog down. And a majority of my friends moved into their colleges 2 weeks before. Monday rolled around and off to work my parents went. I sat surrounded by fear and anxiety in an empty house. The weight of everything I had just been through at camp piled onto me. For the next two days, I repeated the same process. Said goodbye to my parents for the day and waited for my life to fall onto my shoulders again.
Wednesday night I sat in my room and looked around. I didn’t want it anymore. Everything I had been clinging to, my clothes, my makeup, my electronics. I didn’t want any of it. For 18 years, my wonderful parents had provided me with so much and now I wanted nothing to do with it. The guilt weighed down on me.
I have these items, I should be happy. I have so much. Why do I feel so alone?
And then it hit me. It was ok that I felt this way. It was ok that I was overwhelmed. It was ok that I felt guilty. It was ok that I felt lonely. It was ok that my life felt like a mess.
What wasn’t ok was the fact that I wasn’t going to The Lord about it.
In the next few days I spent more and more time working through these things with God. He taught, and is continuing to teach me a few things.
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You are never alone. But it is ok to feel lonely.
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Stress is manageable. But it is ok to stress.
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Blessings are good. But it is ok to not want them anymore. ( material items I mean)
Christ didn’t ask us to be perfect. In fact isn’t that the reason He died on the cross for us in the first place? So that our imperfections could be washed away with the blood of the one who carried our weight. Somewhere along the way we decided that even as believers we had to have it all together. That if we felt ourselves falling apart it was surely because we were failing and not because Jesus was at work. In Hebrews 10:23 it says “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”
God has already saved us. But the restoration is still in progress. He is still working on us. Challenging us. Changing us. He is shaping us to bring His kingdom. And it starts with everyday life. God asks for nothing in return except for us to hold fast to His promises. To walk with Him even during the storms and hardships. God must first break us to build us into a better version of ourselves. And while painful and hard the reward is great in the name of Jesus Christ.
So while my life may be in ruins, it is not ruined. For my God loves rebuilding and He is the best contractor I’ve ever seen.
That being said,
I leave for Cambodia in 14 days! I’m excited to see what God has in store and I can’t wait to see how He teaches me to walk through this season!
