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Preparing + Perspectives + Processing

June 18th – 

Good morning, it’s 8:something am. I don’t really know the exact time because I don’t have my phone nor a watch. I do know that it’s Friday, the eighteenth, day three and our devotional assignment today is to write a little “thankful for…” list. One of my favorite things to do. Time goes by slow and fast, simultaneously, here. We wake up around 5:30-6ish without alarms, unzip our tents to see the golden sun rising through the trees and hanging hammocks. We eat food we’ll be eating around the world for nine months to prepare. We worship twice a day. For hours. I feel wholesome and calm and I’m making friends who have the same heartbeat as me. I’m craving the Bible and I haven’t showered in three days. But I feel like I’m being used, prepared and pursued. I’m thankful for that – I’m thankful I get to be here. I’m thankful I got to tell Kate about my heart for writing and when she prayed over me, she spoke a blessing over it and my ability to tell stories through words without me even asking. I’m thankful that the power of prayer requests can be used silently and still translate, even unspoken. I’m thankful that even though I’m so dirty, I feel clean. Jesus, you make me feel clean. You make me clean. I pray for a continuation of thankfulness and joy.. to burst at the seams of this week. I pray you’ll be speaking to me. reach my heart. Thank you for the rest I find even when I’m so tired. And thank you for the sun on my face this morning, at the AIM campus here in the middle of nowhere Georgia. I know how it feels to be in communication with light. I’m thankful and I’m undeserving yet you still pour out. 


 

 

 

June 22nd, 1:01pm –

Reading through Philippians again and again and again for the next few days. 

“To live is Christ, to die is gain.” phil. 1:21

The way chapter one is set up provides a progression in the priorities of Paul’s intentions and heart. 

He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” phil. 1:6

He is Jesus. So the work that has begun in me will be carried on to completion- that is a declaration. We know and see that because nothing is coincidence in heaven, when I die I’ll be in full gain but that time will come and be by no accident nor by coincidence, but by the completion of He who began the good work in me. I don’t understand nor know how the master of peace created this essence, but He did. I do not have to worry, this life of art is held by He who created me. He who created what He called and still calls “good”. Thanks Jesus! You take away all performance, you remove the blindfold, you call off the act. 


 

June 22nd, 9:37pm –

It’s been two days since I’ve gotten home from boot camp. I’m reflecting. It’s been over 48 hours and I’m still processing. We spent the entirety of the week unplugged from the world outside of the little AIM campus, to gain insight, realign, dive in and embrace discomfort. Zero percent screen time, one hundred percent quality time. Learning everyones love languages, deepest dreams and personal growth stories. My expectations for boot camp were set on exactly what just the words “boot camp” sound like. But those expectations, and most expectations I’m learning, were/are continually shattered. It ended up being such a spiritually awakening, transforming, inspiring and cup-filling week. We spent four days eating only three meals a day, splitting one tray between eight people at family-style breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Bucket showering with freezing cold hose water, the sun and headlamps as sources of light, homes made out of tents, sleeping bags/liners/pads with porta potty bathrooms and no mirrors. It sounds terrible, miserable. Half the time it was, especially when I woke up the first night to a spider crawling on my arm and on the last night to rain dripping on my forehead from the monsoon happening outside my tent. It was extremely stretching, growing and necessary to prepare for what life will look like on the field; stretching. growing. necessary. 


 

June 23rd, 3:21pm –

My passion, desire, inspiration, calling – whatever word you choose – for these next months was only further enhanced from this past week. My gaze is shifted. Becoming more and more kingdom-minded. Walking out the work in me, delighting in who I was created to be and ready to share that with my reality. Liberated. Surrendered. I’m home for two more months before I reunite with my sweet teammates, fellow racers and leaders back in Gainesville for six weeks of training before we finally head out. I’m soaking up these last few weeks in the states, surrounded by my humans and treating my heart with care for the transitional and transforming season I’m walking in. Thanks, Jesus. This is what it feels like to be used. This is what living is like. 

If you made it this far, thank you for listening to my shifted and ever-shifting perspectives, my progression in preparation and mind as I’m processing. Please keep my team and I, aka the entirety of Gap i, in your prayers as we are all walking in our own journeys throughout our conjoined journey on The Race. I’m so thankful. 

All my love,

Kayli 

4 Comments

  1. I love seeing your heart come through your writing. There isn’t a word I can find that tells you how much I understand your experience at boot camp. That says I “get” it in just the right way. There a whole universe of Kingdom living that we spend so much of or lives oblivious to.
    So excited to finally meet you in September!

  2. kayli you are so amazing, and this was so good. I can not wait to do life with you oh SOO soon!!

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