I wasn’t convinced that God had better things for me than what He was asking me to leave behind.
If I’m being honest, I was dreading Training Camp. Like, friends packing my stuff, forcing me into my car with me on the verge of tears, dread.
The community I live in is the most beautifully authentic, loving, healing, growing community I never thought I’d have the privilege to be a part of. Over the past 5 years, I’ve grown continually, had hard conversations, learned honor, cried, been pushed to my limits, had life, love, and destiny spoken over me and called out in me and learned so much about the character of Jesus and how He loves me. It has been so much more than I could have ever asked Jesus to provide for me, but He did it anyway.
This community is what God is calling me away from. And I was convinced that no other group of people could compare to the family of people I’ve been sharing life with the past few years.
Going into training camp, I knew that no one would know me like my community here knows me. No one at training camp would call me, “Kri” or “Krubs,” know how much I love dancing, know how badly I need hugs throughout the day, understand how much I love adventure, get my sense of humor, know my taste in music, know the things I’m good at and the kinds of things I need an extra push to get through, know that I’m passionate about justice, or understand why I live my life the way I do. No one would know these things about me because they’d never met me.
The question was whether or not I would let my squad and my team know me like that or not. At first I wasn’t convinced that this new adventure with these new people was going to be good, or grow me in any way. I honestly just missed my friends—which was super unfair to my new family.
But after experiencing God meeting me in aplace where I initially felt like I didn’t fit in, uncomfortable, awkward, desperately missing my friends, and feeling confused, and turning it into a place of comfort, confirmation, there are several things of which I’m now convinced:
I’m convinced that I can love these people I get the privilege of spending the next year with well, and that they can love me well in return. I’m convinced that they will know me (probably get really annoyed by me at times) and still love me. I’m convinced that we can all grow together, learn from each other, fight for one another, speak life, and love each other well. I’m also convinced that because God is asking me to leave something really good, that He’s got something even better for me.
My team/new fam, Team Illumination!
