Woah Georgia is hot. We pulled up to the Mcdonald’s outside of Toccoa Falls College and everyone instantly started perspiring. I was meeting up with a massive group from K squad and awkwardly sitting in the corner while they got decked out in red. Fortunately when I got there, I found two girls who has also recently switched from K to L but were still riding with K people. These two girls were such a gift. They were funny, chill, and wearing orange in a sea of red. We caravanned onto the Toccoa Falls campus and pulled into the gravel parking lot. We grabbed our packs, ran into the gym for registration, and then set up our tents and had our very first session.
That’s when it started. The process of training, of molding. I came into camp thinking I knew every curveball God was going to throw me. I had imagined huge things. But from that very first night, the Lord started showing me that my vision of Him was TINY.
The speaker was phenomenal. We were told that we had to abandon some stuff, that we would be broken, and to turn that brokenness into dependence on the Lord. Intellectually, I knew that to be true, but I began to realize that, like many of the things I knew, I didn’t really understand what that would look like or how hard that would be. As a born and raised Episcopalian, many of the super charismatic ideas were totally new and highly uncomfortable.
But I decided that I needed to be open. Had I not promised the Lord everything? Didn’t I say I would follow him anywhere? I figured that, as long as what I was learning was Scripturally sound and drew me closer to the God I love, I could probably use some shaking up. It was really easy to make that promise when I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. So I had a choice. Stay where I was, comfortable and small, or to step into the greatness that the Lord has for me and grow closer to Him. I had to trust deeply. I still don’t know how I found the courage to do so, but I decided to say “Yes.” Following the Lord may have taken me to some uncomfortable places in the past, but it was never wrong. I had no idea that that simple word would take me to such a wonderfully difficult place.
