As camp began, I started watching for something shocking to happen that would make me question my faith and life as I knew it before. I had some insights into what to expect from camp, but I quickly learned that there’s no way to prepare for what will happen when God is involved. There was no single distinctive moment that made me do a 180 and say ‘I can never go home the same now’, but as I drove away from camp I knew that something in me had been changed forever.
What brought me to that place were a series of very simple things…
We ate- We were fed the ethnic foods of the locations we’re to travel to. Africa day would probably be the most distinctive for me, considering we had to eat something that resembled grits with our fingers while sitting on the ground and always keeping our heads below the men’s, in a portion that would have fed a small child in America. Each meal-themed day was filled with cultural lessons, but I believe the portions of food that we ate on a daily basis were the most eye opening of all. Americans EAT TOO MUCH!!
We prayed- Constantly! A state we should all be in as believers, constant prayers. I noticed how AIM itself was run by a bunch of crazy folks who prayed all the time and asked God what HE wanted them to do, and you know what, it worked. I noticed that this is a great way to keep folks from making their own plan, rather than following the original perfect plan that God has for us. We also prayed for each other constantly, asking God to show us how to love and encourage each other, and you know what… He answered. We asked God to show us how to love and encourage those in the downtown area of Atlanta and He showed up again, and answered us again, giving us words of encouragement and leading us into the places He wanted to use us.
We worked- We built a camp… ‘we’ being the women of the camp. We collected wood, dug a latrine, built shelter for 43 people out of tarps and rope, and cooked over an open fire. It was a crazy night, with down-pouring rain and at least 50% wearing wet clothing until we got back to our regular camp the next day.
We were challenged- The women of the J squad were given $20 to buy lunch for 28 women at a gas station in only 10 minutes. A little peanut butter and jelly, bread, a few bites of a granola bar and 4 saltine crackers later… we were fed lunch.
We grieved- Well, they tried to make us grieve… for 4 days straight. They tried to help us remember the pains of our distant and not-so-distant pasts, and helped us to heal from them by praying for us, praying for the spirit to heal us, to help us feel and deal with our pain. These days were discouraging for me at first in the way that I didn’t feel a need to grieve ANYTHING. I’ve been on anti-depressants for 3.5 years and in and out of counseling for about the same amount of time. I believe that I have worked through the pains of my past and am actually in a great place. I was still on the medication, but I had come to terms with the fact that I would probably always take them just like others in my family.
One night of camp when a speaker was talking about his experiences with healing folks, he started having words for individuals on our team. One of the words he had was for a person who had a history of mental illness in their family. He said ‘you are not going to pass on this illness to your children’, ‘it ends with you’. I wasn’t sure at the time if it was for me or not, but my heart pounded as I heard him speak those words. My biggest fear in having a family in the future is passing my genetic information that carries depression onto my children. I prayed that it was for me and about Friday of training camp (7 days in), I thought to myself, I don’t need these pills anymore and I just stopped taking them. For anyone who’s ever taken anti-depressants, you know that you shouldn’t just go cold turkey. You need to ease yourself off of them, but today is my 42nd day without them and I can’t remember a time when I’ve ever been happier. I am healed. GOD HEALED ME! And all He did was speak a few words through a man at this training camp. I still have to pinch myself sometimes and ask myself if it’s real.
Everything this week seemed to happen in such a way that I was never really ‘blown away’, but sitting where I am now, it’s hard to believe it all really happened. Our human nature is unbelief, justification, rationalization and thinking that what happens is just coincidence. But after this one week of being exhausted, hungry, cold, wet, bug-bitten and uncomfortable. After this one week of experiencing God in this way, I can never put Him back in the box I had Him in before. He is so big and can do so much in every one of our lives, if only we let Him. If we could just give up our fears, our control and our will for our lives, what glorious riches we would find ourselves in, living only for Jesus.
