Training Camp was not what I expected. I arrived in the Atlanta airport with a two hour layover until I flew to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was sitting there minding my own business when a college aged girl approached me. She asked me if I was going on a Real life trip and I was surprised but answered yes. She answered that she was too and invited me to join a bunch of other Real Life participants on the other side of the desk. I had no idea that we were going to be training with all the other Real life teams! It has been so great spending time with all of these Christian college students.
During training we have gone over a lot of subjects, but my favorite has been that of personal prisons. The four personal prisons are comparison, regret, bitterness, and withdrawal. Though I feel like I find myself in all of them at one time or another, I relate most to the prison of comparison. I don’t consciously compare myself with others, but when he described this prison, I found that I do compare myself to others all the time. People who are in the prison of comparison are usually the most critical and they are afraid they will never measure up. I realized that this was me in a nutshell. I prayed to God to help me get out of this prison and I felt such relief afterwards. It is definitely something that I am going to have to continue to work on, but I am very excited to have made this first step by recognizing this problem.
Training camp has been amazing and I have never felt so prepared spiritually for a trip. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for my team and I this summer!
