Drum roll please…
Part two: The juicy stuff. Training camp. Now I won’t give much away, simply because I feel like not knowing what is going to happen to you throughout the week is part of the growing process. So without further ado, here it is…
I turn the steering wheel and follow the winding road down into what now seems like familiar territory. The blue sign reading “Adventures in Missions” comes into view, but not before people dancing in onesie pajamas in the street, with music blaring, a sense of euphoria floating in the air. All I could think was that this was a totally different place than I left earlier that day. The Beauty for Ashes retreat was about vulnerability, everyone had calm voices and eyes that begged you to share, but now all I felt was free spirits and joy. A feeling of something much bigger than ourselves. How amazing and unreal could it get? I was here. We were here. This was real.
Fast forward a bit and all of N squad is being summoned to a special meeting. We had heard whispers, talked, thought, worried and strategized ourselves nearly to insanity because we knew what this meeting was about. There were too many of us. Some would have to go. So we marched off into what felt like battle. Excuse the drama, but we knew when we left that campsite that some of us wouldn’t be coming back. We looked around at each other thinking, “is it gonna be you? Will it be me? I hope its not them..”. It felt like the Hunger Games, not in the sense that we were in physical danger but our hearts were. Sit down, wait for your name to be drawn out of a bowl, and if it is drawn, we’ll call it God’s sovereignty and trust that it’s what’s best, say a prayer and send you on your way. If your name isn’t called well then congrats, you made it. You’ll be left behind to mourn the casualties and pick back up where you left off. After all, they only switched to another route they weren’t actually picked for the hunger games. Service is service and God is a better judge of where you’re needed than you are. Of course we all knew this, and no one argued that God’s will was best, but was that supposed to make it easier? It didn’t.
Now that I’ve left you with a dramatic image of what the first night of camp was like, lets move on.
I don’t typically let things affect me. Physical and emotional pain have always been something I’ve usually been able to control how much I felt. I know that sounds a little Charles Xavier, but I’m very good at being what or who I’m needed to be in any given situation. I’m more apt to not care than anything, but not for that week and a half. I wasn’t given a choice. No one needed me to be anything other than myself, and when I realized that, I was at a loss because I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was broken, I was happy, I was nervous, scared, excited. I was angry, I was vulnerable, I was so empty and so full. I’ve never opened myself up to anyone that much in my entire life and now all of a sudden I’m crying every day, I’m hugging people, I’m letting people love me. I don’t do that. Luckily, God didn’t care what I had always done before.
God has never revealed himself to me in a more real way than he did at training camp. He taught me about love. He taught me that it was okay to love and be loved. That it was okay to not be strong all the time and that I didn’t always have to be the brave or the stoic. He taught me that it was okay to feel, okay to hurt, and okay to be happy. That it was even what he wanted. He told me that I could let go of my past hurts, my present hurts, the names people called me, and that I called myself. That I could let go of regret, that I didn’t have to hold onto all of those things to punish myself because I’m so disgusting and unworthy. No, he taught me that he loved me. He taught me that he sent his son as the sacrifice so that I wouldn’t have to carry that pain and that burden. He reminded me that Jesus took that from me then, and that if I’d let him, he would take that pain from me now.
And so I did it. I gave him my pain, my sorrow, my hatred and bitterness, I gave him my chains and he replaced those chains with freedom. He replaced them with love and laughter and unspeakable joy.
Training camp was one of the hardest, most necessary thing I have ever done in my life. I learned more about who I really am in that week than I have in almost 23 years of life. I know that may make me sound a bit ignorant, but while I may have already “known” everything I learned I never knew how to apply it. How do you give it over to him? How do you let him love you? I’m not gonna give you the answer to that question. I was broken and healed a thousand times to get it, and so you may have to do the same.
Until part 3…
Mary Auger
