The last ten days I have slept in a tent in the Georgia August heat. I have showered with only a bucket and hose. I have sweat more than I care to admit or remember. My feet ache, muscles are sore, and almost all my clothes are stained from the red dirt and clay that invade everything. But I’m writing this with the biggest smile on my face, because while these are important details of training camp, there’s only one you really need to know: the Lord has filled me to the brim with unimaginable joy, perseverance, community, and peace these last 10 days.
I got just a small taste of what the next year of my life on the Race will look like, and I can confidently say I’m itching for it to begin!
I packed as if I were really launching on the Race, with only what I could carry on my back in a 65L pack. We hiked 2.2 miles with all of our gear in under 38 minutes. We completed many different potential scenarios like sleeping on the ground in a simulated airport, bunking with 11 other girls in a very crammed community space, having half our squad’s luggage “lost” by an airline and sharing what little we have for a night with a partner. While the lack of A/C, spiders in my sleeping bag, snoring teammates, sleeping on the hard ground with nothing but a jacket for a blanket, crickets served for lunch, and port-a-potties for bathrooms were obviously not preferable, going into training camp I asked the Lord to give me a spirit of yes in every situation that normally would’ve sent me running for the hills. If this high maintenance, beauty school graduate sleeping outside in the dirt and mud and rarely showering for 10 days isn’t proof of what God can do with a willing heart, then I really have no idea what is.
Apart from the literal dirt aspects of training camp, I experienced a spiritual revival like never before these last ten days. On our first night during worship, the Lord spoke the word “belonging” over me. I didn’t understand the full extent of it at the time, but I now know I needed that confidence early on. In the moments the enemy whispered in my ear “you can’t do this, you’ll never survive eleven months of this, you don’t belong here,” I had the Creator of the universe standing over me and screaming otherwise. I have never experienced a community like that of my loving, encouraging, supportive, hilarious, wonderful, crazy bunch of misfits that make up P squad. Our squad leadership received the word “love” from the Lord as our theme, and we certainly lived up to it. By the end of ten days, these strangers from all over the country with little in common apart from the God we serve and have given our lives to, became a family I can no longer imagine my life without. Within our squad, we celebrated freedom from eating disorders, depression, anxiety, sexual abuse, pornography, absentee parents, as well as physical, emotional, and spiritual healing for sin, shame, and pain buried decades deep. I lost count of how many baptisms I made myself dizzy from screaming so loud for last night.
A year ago this week, I was returning home from Jamaica feeling terrified and directionless for what would come next. I cannot believe how far He has taken me since, and my journey on the Race has still only just begun.
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