It started at training camp, when the first thing I did was set up my little two person tent, pump up my sleeping pad, unroll my sleeping bag, fluff unroll my pillow, and set up my "home" for the week. I was so thankful to have this sanctuary, this private place to unwind and process in throughout the sure-to-be crazy and stretching week. I had already decided it was going to be my place of refuge, a place to escape the overwhelming task of getting to know 60 strangers and if I was lucky, a place to sneak a quick nap. Oh, was I wrong. So vey, very wrong.
The first night we gathered in the auditorium of Toccoa Falls College, where Bill Swan, a staff member of AIM, talked to us about those two horrific beautiful words… Rights and expectations. He spoke of an experience on his Race, where his team was told that in their next country they would have awesome housing, only to find a metal hut hardly big enough for six people with a tiny hole in the wall that tics were flooding out of. As he said, it hardly met their expectations. All the while he was talking about various experiences, speaking wisdom and truth into us, I kept thinking, "I don't have expectations. Good thing I'm such a flexible person." "Expectations? I don't even know what to expect. I'm go-with-the-flow-Jaclyn and good thing this talk is for everyone else but me." And rights? "Oh, rights… I don't have rights. What rights?" Yeah. Right.
As Bill was talking, I was listening to the beautiful crashing of thunder and lightening and rain on the roof of the auditorium, fear welling up inside of me about my tiny tent in a low-lying field a little bit down the road. "No, no," I thought. "God wouldn't let anything happen to me on my first night. I'm exhausted, I already smell bad, and He knows I just need some sleep." Yeah. Right.
After our session for the night was over, we ran back to tent city in a serious downpour. Like, flash flood, heavy, heavy downpour. I unzipped my tent and dove into my warm sleeping bag a puddle. No, more like a pond, in my tent. I pull out my headlamp and flash it around to find everything soaked. I. Was. Furious. Really God?! My first night in this strange place with strange people and I'm sleeping in a swamp?! Thanks a lot. So for the next hour I maneuvered my bag and electronics to the only dry one-foot radius of my tent, attempting to soak up the pond with my (water resistant) rain jacket and towel the size of a washcloth. And then I gave up. I laid on top of my wet sleeping pad and wet sleeping bag, with a soggy pillow, and I pouted. I was so tired and so angry. It was so unfair. And then it hit me. Maybe, just maybe, I had expectations. And maybe, just maybe, God was trying to tell me something. So I prayed. I asked God why I felt like this, why I was so angry and defeated and felt so alone. And the words "Rights and Expectations" flooded through my mind, as I realized that I'm not so flexible after all and that actually, this was just a small example of how dark this area of my heart really was.
The rest of the week continued to show me how many expectations and rights I think I have and when I got home, it didn't stop. My breaks went out, I stood in the rain for two straight days in a parking lot field, every day my schedule goes down the drain and so much more. These little things keep happening that show me how tightly I hold onto my days, and really, if I'm honest, how tightly I hold onto the plan I have for my life. My brothers always joke that the world revolves around me. "It's all about you, isn't it Jaclyn?" they'll say. And while they're joking, I'm seeing a lot of truth in that. I'm seeing that I do try to revolve the world around me, around my expectations and rights and the way I want my life to go. And I get frustrated when the smallest of plans goes awry, defeated when I'm led in a different direction and things don't go according to me.
And yet, as I look at my life, I'm reminded to shout praises to God for the fact that He never fails to show me how much greater His plans are for my life and that He loves me enough to let me sleep in a puddle for a night, or stand in a field in a downpour, because my reaction to those little things show the yuck and muck of my heart and remind me of greatness that HE calls me to in HIM.
So it's my prayer that God would continue to bring the rain (although please not literally, anymore.) That He would continue to take these expectations and rights away, and that I (and you!) would welcome change and learn to be flexible in the knowledge that He is before all things and holds all things together. (Colossians 1:17) It's my prayer that I (we) would learn to surrender my (our) expectations and rights daily, and that I (we) would receive what God has for me (us), whether seemingly good or seemingly bad, and remember His plans are always greater. (Jeremiah 29:11)
