Training camp is exactly four days away and my emotions have been anywhere on the spectrum from “I’m so nervous I want to throw up” to “let’s just leave right now for it!”
For those who don’t know, training camp is a 10 day training session that takes place in Gainesville, Georgia. I will be officially meeting my squadmates (WOOHOO!!!), finding out who will be on my team (WOOHOO!!!²), and sleeping in a variety of situations from tents to buses (…). Truthfully, this is all I really know about camp, so the rest will be a mystery until afterwards!
If I’m being honest, one of my biggest worries is meeting my squadmates/teammates.
What will they be like? Who are they really? What do they like and dislike? Will we have similar interests? Will they get my sense of humor? Will they like me? I know we won’t always get along, but will we be able to get along in general?
In the midst of wondering about who my squadmates are, I’ve also begun to wonder who I am.
This past May brought a lot of changes that have, in turn, showed me where I was putting my identity.
I graduated college, left my Mankato community, and moved to my mom’s house with her new husband and his daughters.
During all of these changes I began to feel a sense of displacement and loneliness. I began to question my worth and what exactly I was doing.
Amazingly, in my time of doubt God has been teaching me His truths. Of all the truths I’ve been reminded of, His grace is the one that echoes in my head every day.
God’s perfect and unending grace which is neither deserved by me, nor earned by me.
It’s not about:
-the lies I believe about who I am.
-who people think I am.
-what I have done.
-what people have done to me.
In God’s grace these notions and circumstances have no effect on who I truly am in Christ.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air… Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from ourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:1-8
