Alright, so I know I said that I have more amazing support stories to tell you which probably left you with expectations of another blog like the previous one, but this will be one full of a different kind of support story, less financial more emotional and spiritual.
I got to spend the last week in the beautiful northern arkansas at Camp Revolution, a church camp for some churches around the kansas city area. I even had the privilege of going to the camp as a family group/squad leader which meant that I got to hang out and get at the heart of the Lord's truth with some great high school students. It was such a time of refreshment for my heart as I got to walk along side them in listening to the voice of God through out our days that week.
I'll be honest, as it goes with a majority of the times I hear from the Lord, I was faced with some challenges, which I embraced with some difficulty, but embraced none the less.
The week was a beautiful blend of life for me. I was at this camp with my boyfriend, Caleb, and his family and got to kind of co-lead my family group and share a room with one of my good,good friends, Jill. I'm glad that I got to experience the week with her because we were both kind of in a similar situation walking into it; we were noobies, first time campers who were also leaders and we were both there with our boyfriends who had basically grown up
going to camp and seemingly knew just about everyone. These people, who I got to come to camp with, have been engrained into my life over the last year and are very much a part of what I will miss when I leave states. I have learned so much from and experienced the Lord's love through each them, and as the days until I leave get less and less the feelings of attachment and desire to spend as much time with them as possible only intensify. Getting to take a week out of the normal day to day to spend with them was an incredible blessing, and in the midst of 
this was thrown another blessing of getting to see one of my squad mates, Lilli Walker <—such a beautiful soul. She just so happens to live in Arkansas and decided to make the drive up north to see me while I was down there. Her presence alone caused a collision of two worlds for me.
On top of that though, through out the week with every lesson I was presented through others at the camp be that adult leaders or gals and guys in my groups or through the sermons of the camp pastor, there was consistently mixed in or stirred up some truth I had learned or heard at training camp for the world race. It was an interesting occurrence and as my present situation was being blended with my soon to be present (to be exact in 35 days present) situation I found my emotional state to be a weird one. I think that up to that point I had kind of compartmentalized my life in two: my life now, which I could come home to in a year and then the world race. straight up: foolishness. But it was the easiest thing to do, which made it my natural default when I couldn't easily reconcile the two. These overlapping truths and lessons composed one of the first steps towards the Lord helping mesh my life back together mentally. He's beginning to show me how, while this trip will be a distinct time in my life, it is still a part of the bigger picture of my life and the truths that I will experience and walk into during it are right now and will be relevant and real at home.
So one of the first few nights during training camp they had us go on this tiki torch walk, which was basically a hike by torch light with some of our squad mates. During the hike we stopped at certain points and were challenged or rather asked by staff if we could lay down the expectations we might have regarding the world race in order to be open to whatever may happen and to give ourselves to the Lord without reservations. Of course I said yes to every scenario they presented, and in those moments I really meant and believed that I could walk into the rest of this year with out expectations of what may be. About three weeks later I find myself in northern arkansas listening to the camp pastor, Jason, reading from Jeremiah and speaking about the broken cisterns and wells that we try to drink from and which we will never find satisfaction from, then in the end he poses the question: what are your broken cisterns? I walked into my family group time (a kind of debrief discussion time withe the girls I led for the week) not really certain of my answer. Even after talking about everything I couldn't really say something that I felt I didn't just come up with in order to have an answer, so at the end of our family group time I prayed that we would all be shown more clearly what we are trying to find our satisfaction or sustenance from that is not of the Lord.
After that we walked down to the snack shop, where everyone was getting custard to hang out until it was time to head to bed, we had a curfew of 11 and "lights out" by 1130. I'll admit a piece of me thought of these rules only applicable to the students and not the leaders, which is somewhat foolish because we are supposed to lead by example and in order to enforce any kind of curfew wouldn't you, the "enforcer", have to be there to do that…? but in the moment my mentality was such: I had spent a whole day with other people, running around and getting used to this environment that was new to me and I was ready to hang out and talk about everything with Caleb. I walked down to the snack shack with the expectation of that getting to happen and well, it didn't. When I had to leave to walk with the girls back to our dorm I was honestly not in the most content mood ever. And then as laid in my bed about to text Caleb to say goodnight I felt the weight, I'm sure some of you know what I mean when I say I like physically felt the weight, of my realization that the Lord was being really faithful in moment in answering my prayer from earlier that night. I all the sudden realized that I was holding to the expectation that I would get some sort of alone time, at camp it was alone time with Caleb but in general it's just solitude, and it was one of those wells Jason had been talking about. I was banking on having that time because I was looking to it to sustain me in someway.
I think I knew that laying down expectations was not going to be a one time deal, though I wasn't living that. And I think I knew that laying down expectations did not just pertain to life on the world race but to life in the bigger picture, though I wasn't living that. it's something that needs to happen now, during the next year and there after. Its about more than just "not expecting things", it's about not putting your faith in those expectations and it's about giving up whatever you think you might be entitled to (which let's be honest, we think we're entitled to a lot more than we can admit off the cuff). It's about that and then giving yourself over to plans of the Lord, which might be vastly different than what you're expectations were, so it'll require having faith in Him instead of those.
There were a few other double-whammy truth moments out at camp, and man am I grateful for them and praying that I see the seeds of them grow and take root in my life, but if I were to write about them, this would turn into an even longer novel than it already is. I posted a photo blog of camp though with some captions including some of those stories and one of world race training camp is soon to come, so you should check them out!
Thanks for reading all of this and being a part of my life, I'm appreciative 🙂
