WHERE AM I GOING?!?! THAILAND!!!
WHEN AM I GOING?! THIS MORNING!!!
AM I GONNA PEE ON THE PLANE?! ABSOLUTELY NOT!:)
I have a 3 hour flight to NYC, a whopping 16 hour flight to Hong Kong and then another 7 hour flight to Bangkok. I super love flights so I’m pumped, i don’t know about you can guys but i can legit like knock out ANYWHERE, I’ll sleep the whole time. Got some good music, a good book…ready to go!
So part of the AIM community is that before any mission trip launches rather it’s WR, WR gap year, passport teams, or any weekly mission trip is that we all go to training camp. Training camp is to give us insight through our leaders and speakers (WR alumni) to encourage and prepare us the best they can for what is to come. If you have not read my training camp blog from the WR, lets take a trip back in time to the hardest 10 days of my entire race. This training camp though is extremely different, instead of 10 days it’s 3 and we get yummy food…last time we didn’t!
This time around i knew what to expect, i knew about bucket showers, i knew about porta potties, i knew about the amazing life changing worship we have every night, i knew about having camp sinks where you have to pump your foot to get water out. I was also super looking forward to the sessions we have, which are always so life bringing and encouraging.
So my mom drops me off…you don’t truly know me unless you know i get SUPER homesick very easily. So when she leaves i like automatically get this pit in my tummy…like…ohhhh noooo what am i gonna do without her?! That soon passed when i met my teammates! So my time is going great, getting a feel of my team, who they are, who i am with them. The days are going and I’m really loving sessions, i feel like I’m getting a lot out of them. My teammates are all so fun, so easy going, so full of life, i love it. However, sometimes it takes me a little while to truly open up and be goofy around people i just met. Which is fine, but in my head it’s not. It’s actually one of the biggest lies Satan tells me. Sunday morning rolls around and i start to think “what am i even doing here?” “I just don’t know if I’m ready to go again”, “i need more time with Jesus to figure out if it’s even time for me to go yet.” I start to see my team as a threat, almost like I’m not as good as them….which is where Satan goes with the previous lie^^^^ “you’re not like them, you’re not good enough, you’re not seen or heard. If your teammates can’t see you what makes you think Jesus can?”….and then this thing starts to happen where i push myself to the back. I don’t use my voice, i don’t walk in the confidence Jesus has given me…and slowly but surely the devil has me thinking I’m the most unloved, unbeautiful (that’s not a word but you get the point) unwanted person out there. He literally starts working from the inside out. He starts with personality insecurities, moves to emotional insecurities and then he hits harder with the physical insecurities.
At this point in the day, I’m on the phone with my mother sobbing…because so quickly my great life bringing weekend, turned into me thinking I’m literally just the most unloveable person. One of the speakers this weekend talked about speaking truth over ourselves and allowing others to speak over us. Every truth that Jesus has, Satan has a lie for. What i learned this weekend is i know who Jesus says i am. I know the woman he molded and created to be. I know they gifts he has given me, and I’m confident in those. I’m confident that i can go out and share his truth to others. But somehow I always let that one lie takeover every truth I know. Because it’s so easy. It’s so easy to believe that bad rather than the good. It’s so easy to sit on a balcony and cry because you feel unseen, instead of going inside and having someone pray for you and declare who you are….which is what i did eventually lol. All this… because you feel defeated.
It’s because the enemy’s job is to isolate you. His job is to pick at every insecurity we have and just throw it in your face. He wants you to feel like this Jesus dude works for everyone except you. Jesus sees everyone except you. Everyone has a connection with him except you… because you’re not good enough. Which could not be farther from the truth. The heart of our Jesus is sweet..and kind…and merciful it is loving, not conditional, peaceful and so much more.
So good news, my world race squad mentor Sam is actually over all the passport teams now, so she was there. She also knows like the deepest parts of my heart and my struggle with feeling unseen. She was actually the first person to promise me she was going to fight for me to feel seen. Sam holds a special place in a lot of hearts. I go inside after throwing myself a nice pitty party, get her and say “i need you to pray for me right now”. And she stopped what she was doing…and she prayed. And i prayed. And truth was spoken. Life was given. Souls were fed. Jesus was seen.
You see, when we walk in lies, we start believing that is who we are. But when we declare truth over ourselves, we gain tools to break the lies. And it’s hard. It’s so hard because in these moments you just feel so broken, at least i do. But when we stand up, declare who Jesus is and who he has made us to be, Satan has no choice rather than to leave. We are the light of the world, and you cannot shine your light walking in the darkness of the lies Satan wants to keep you in. My prayer today has been to walk boldly and confidently in who Jesus made me to be, so that i can boldly share who he is. To feel safety within my team and know they love me just how i am, even if it takes me until the last day to dance in front of them:) to push myself to use my voice and stand in the front, because that’s where i belong and Jesus doesn’t want me in the back.
I’m currently laying on an airport floor on my sleeping and burning up under my sleeping bag. Next time I blog, I’ll be in Thailand!!!
