Listening to my teammate’s life stories have given me a big appreciation of peoples lives and the difficulties they walk through. I never realized how many struggles each one of us face in each of our lives, how broken our pasts are, and how much abuse people have gone through. Even to the point where they can’t share it with their family or friends due to the fear of rejection/dismissal or further hurt.
When I first met my squad, I thought they were a bunch of outstanding human beings with so much life in them. Little did I know how much each one of them walked through to get to where they are. On the outside, we all looked like happy human beings. We didn’t realize how much we needed to work through our past to free us in our future.
In order to hear each other’s life stories, we cultivated a community where it is safe to be vulnerable and to share our past. We shared our stories in order to find inner healing and reconciliation, and to know how to love each other well. With 3 team changes, and about 5-7 persons per team, I have heard a majority of my squad mates past life.
This has grown a bigger appreciation and empathy in my heart towards people. I realize people are not simple. We are intertwined with so much past hurts and abuse that causes us to act a certain way or think a certain way. What is more incredible is to see each of these persons lives change because they start to understand who they really are in the eyes of God. Me included. I’ve had a difficult past and knowing now that my past doesn’t define who I am now. I can ask for forgiveness and find reconciliation, and that God sees me as his son and new creation. This is a big revelation for me. I now can look at a bright future of freedom and not of shame.
God has grown in me a heart for people and to empathize more than when I first started the race. I want to get to know people in a deeper level. I hope to bring community back home where there is vulnerability and the openness to have grace and love for one another. It is really a sweet thing. ??
And to end this blog, here is the bible verse that was spoken over our squad. Something to live by!
2 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
– Colossians 3 : 12-17
