A Day In The Life: Training Camp Edition

Safe to say that I have successfully spent a month of my life sleeping in the woods. It has had its ups and downs (such as me currently de-molding my wet tent after last night’s thunderstorm). Alas, I can confidently assure you that I have fallen in love with my little house in the trees. The relationships I am forming feel like lifetime bonds, yet time moves so quickly here I feel like I arrived only yesterday. My days are packed with life-changing counseling, stewardship, and community. As someone who thrives under pressure and is typically a fan of structured spontaneity, having a routine has been quite nice. 

Here is what a typical day looks like for a racer…

8:00- breakfast 

9:00- devotional 

10:00- morning session

12:00- chores

12:30- lunch

1:30- free time

3:00- squad time (games or working on funding and blogging)

4:00- evening session

5:00- dinner 

6:00- team time (debriefing, feedback, bible study, ect…)

7:00- free time 

I truly love my days here, but I can find it hard to catch my breath in between the packed days full of amazing teaching, board games, deep talks and movie nights. The Lord has already worked in and through me in amazing ways. The refining process is tiring. It can be hard to take advantage of my free time without stopping to soak in what I just learned or thinking about upcoming tasks. This could be something as sweet as my quiet time or something a little less glamorous like washing my mildew-smelling clothing in a home depot bucket.

As God often does, He brought me exactly what I needed to hear today: Exodus 16. I read about the Israelites who Moses delivered out of enslavement from Egypt. Living in the desert, they found themselves hungry and begging for food. God gave them what they asked for by raining down manna from heaven. His one request was for the Israelites to not gather more than a day’s worth of food. When the manna rained down they did not obey God and gathered more than they needed, saving it for the next day. When they woke up it became smelly and infested with maggots.  

In that story we see God giving people just enough sustenance to last for that day. When what was made for today is saved for tomorrow, we get maggots in our manna. I am learning so much and understanding a lot of my past as I experience the sanctification process. Hard but necessary stuff. Reading Exodus has reminded me to take things one day at a time, as I learn to rely on the Lord to provide just enough rest, strength, and grace for today. 

In Lamentations, it says, “His mercies are new every morning” -3:22.

Faith is strength for today and hope for tomorrow. When we use today’s strength to worry about or fight tomorrow’s battles we don’t taste God’s grace and mercies for today. As quickly as my time in Gainesville, Georgia began, it is almost coming to an end. I have one more week of training and that is bittersweet. My soul will miss this intense pouring into, but I can’t wait to begin pouring out. I hope as I continue my journey that my racers, my supporters, and my readers will get sustenance from our Father so together we can embrace the rest, strength, and grace to fight the battles of the day.