I hear only the gasp of my lungs for air and the sound of my feet slapping the pavement as I run frantically.
Sweat burns my eyes and my shirt sticks to me. The speed with which I run does nothing to cool me.
I run in fear.
I see a dark figure in the distance coming towards me at a rapid rate. It appears that he is running.
My fear grows.
Something about him is odd. I continue to run but my mind is now not only occupied by fear, but by this figure running at me as well. I cannot stop and so the distance between us steadily decreases.
My fear runs beside me. Staring at me but I won’t turn and stare back.
His clothes. The way he runs. The emotion written on his face. Recognition slams me in the chest and I skid to a halt, just a short distance from the man.
Me.
Stark terror masks his…my….face. blunt and utter terror crawling across my face. With terror comes something else. I see that I am emaciated. Skeletal. My eyes are sunken. My elbows stick out. I am withered; wasted. My clothes are tatters. Ripped at the elbows; the knees. My shoes are mere strips of leather tied together. And the stench! Oh, the stench is unbearable! It permeates the air! I smell dirt and rotten wood.
I smell death.
The man that I see staring back at me in that mirror is gone. He is no more. The man I ran to and from is not the man I am today. He is who I was before I was accepted to the World Race and before I knew that something great was about to happen; before I knew that I could be a different person and that life would forever change from that moment on; before I knew that my squad-my family-could speak life into me with the power God has given them and erase the wretched scent of the grave.
Where before I could not escape, now I am far from that man. Training camp gave me a vulnerability and a willingness to confront who I was; face that mirror instead of running and send it crashing it to ground. Who knew that one week could have such an effect on me? Who knew that I would find myself broken and crying with 150 people? Who knew that I would share the hardest parts of my life with 44 people that I was meeting for the first time? Who knew that I would swim across a dark lake in complete terror of what may be swimming below me and realize that I’m not alone? That I not only have God swimming with me, but 14 of the strongest men I’ve ever known swimming with me as well? That we would get out of the lake and only grow in strength? That when it was time to swim back again, my terror was gone, replaced by the knowledge that I was a different person.
Who knew?
Well, the mirror is broken and now I run, not to and from who I used to be, but to God and to the sure strength laying in front of me each step of the way. I was told to leave all expectations behind when I arrived at training camp. So too when I launch. I can do that. I can leave all my expectations behind. All the ideas of how race will go. What I will not let go, however, is the expectation that God will continue to work in me and change me through the 11 months of servitude I am about to undertake. The expectation that who I was yesterday is not who I will be today and who I am today is not who I will be tomorrow, for each day will be a day of change and each hour, an hour of growth. For that man in the mirror is dead.
