One of the requirements of the World Race is to give each other feedback on the daily. At first, I thought this was a novelty thing to do. Something that could be cool to do but I never understood the importance of it. We were taught how to do feedback firstly at training camp, and then a few more examples during launch. What was really good about this is that the point is to encourage others by calling them higher to a better version of themselves (What God has created us to truly be!).
What feedback looks like is perceiving what happens in a day about someone. Feedback could be positive encouragement in a way of words of affirmation or it can also be encouragement in parts of our lives that we are not as strong in. The latter is definitely a more difficult thing to do, but its really good because everyone on our team is coming forward in love for one another. This is the key! As God have said, ‘Let all that you do, be done in love’ (1 Corinthians 16: 14).
But living in community is HARD. I haven’t experienced something like this before. I’ve never lived with a group of friends where we are around each other 24/7! I realize it takes a lot of energy to be peopling and you do have to find time find rests. There were also some communication issues that had hurt me…
There were several cases where when living in community, my team mistakenly cut me off when I am speaking. I new it was never intentional for my team to do this, but it definitely hurt as I felt I wasn’t being listened to. I didn’t know how to fix it, and I didn’t want to get into conflict. I also wanted to analyze why this was the case before I spoke about it. So over the last 2 weeks, it happened a lot but I didn’t tell anyone. I thought maybe it was my low voice and its easy for people to not hear me. I also thought maybe God is teaching me a lesson on how much I should speak and when I should hold my tongue. I didn’t want to share my struggle because I was worried I would hurt people’s feeling, or have people feel sorry for me. It was just not an easy conversation to have.
Eventually, after a comment Connor made during team feedback time, where he said, each one of us may feel like they are under the spotlight, but in reality, we are all working to become better in community living and better human beings. This gave me the encouragement to share with the team about what was going the past few weeks. I pointed out certain scenarios to explain what had happened with specific people on my team. I also knew that my team wasn’t cutting me off intentionally. And as I was sharing this, I can see they were surprised this had happened and felt hurt because they had hurt me.
We spent a good time talking about this and sharing each others heart. They all encouraged me that my voice matters, that they were glad I pointed out their mistakes of not giving full attention when someone is speaking. They understood it was tough for me to bring up and commended me to do so. Kaylin brought up the point that we can all work on this as a whole. Where when someone is talking, we give them our full attention, even in the madness of multiple conversations and the loud sounds of community living. In the end, I felt that there were no attacks made, that all that was discussed was out of love. I felt the team cared for me and each other. We gave each other hugs, and it was nice.
I’ve also felt a huge difference in the one week living together and giving feedback. There is a lot of things I didn’t realize about myself that I thought I wasn’t good at, but having times where your team can speak into your life through words of affirmation, you start to grow into who you are capable to be!
My team spoke into my life about how I do have music abilities, that I can be helpful in leading music in a church service. My Squad Leader pointed out how I carry the joy of the Lord. My team also encouraged me that a lot of times I maybe hesitant in doing things that I lack confidence, and that I could be more confident because when I do help out on things, I do a good job. These encouragements have helped me grow in my abilities!
I would encourage you, the reader, to do the same! Go give positive feedback. Go give feedback that will call someone higher through encouragement and most importantly, do it out of genuine love! Because its just so good!
