Mulling It Over

With the wind whipping past, waterfall roaring, and the moon shining briefly through the clouds... I sat straight up and said: “My name is Seth Thomas Powell. And I am the first one like me!” A Nepali moon pic I took that seemed to fit in this context.  Now, let me give you some more context. Recently I’ve been chipping away at myself. Edging, smoothing, refining. Often times when you do this you find things you didn’t think were there. One of the things that I found is a deep perfectionism. Self-imposed perfectionism. Brought on by the idea that I need to be perfect to do God’s work. To do what He as called me for. To be worth of the praise and love I receive. To be of worth I needed to be perfect. To be anything I needed to be perfect.   It was an interesting development, for sure. I realized how this has spread into other areas of my life. How it had deep roots. How it was the cause of many other things. Things I hadn’t known how to trace until now. ...

Full of food and football, I grabbed a walking stick and flashlight and took off down the short trail. It had been a totally perfect day, basically because I had done almost nothing with myself. A true rarity in my current phase of life. But for some reason I was feeling restless and discontented. So at around 9 PM, I left. My family and I are staying in a condo right on Toxaway Falls in North Carolina. It’s glorious. For weeks now I’ve been waiting to get to this point. Utterly spent. Nothing left, just limping along until I could make it to Thanksgiving. Why? I really didn’t know. I just felt exhausted. As if I’ve been barely squeaking by for a month or two. It’s been a tough season lately. Quick, but tough. A season of transitions. It’s been great, don’t get me wrong, but tough nonetheless. I’ve been growing more than I thought. Learning, changing. Essentially growing pains. And it’s left me weary. Couple that with the little stresses of leaving in January and it’s a lot.  ...

I was standing at the campsite, my tent all setup with Ali and Stacy standing nearby. Sara was on the way back from the airport with the Racers. I thought I was ready. I had just learned who I would be leading with over the 5 months January, which by the way is an absolutely stellar group of people. I was feeling confident. My people were awesome, and I was going to be with A squad. I knew absolutely nothing about them, but I knew they were going to be here anytime now. My 5 th Training Camp was about to begin, this one a little different from the rest. This Training Camp I was going to be meeting and living with my brand new squad. The one that I’m going to be leading! Going into this Training Camp (TC), I was nervous. I mean, I knew I was supposed to be here. I knew it had to be them. I felt totally at peace with all of my decisions. Even more so when I finally met A squad. The tent city where we all lived.  Guys, they’re just great. They’re so cool. So much...

I’m not sure I’ll ever forget July 2015. It was easily one of the longest months of my life. Good? Absolutely. Crazy? You bet. Exhausting? Like you wouldn’t believe. July is basically the apex of busy season around Adventures. We’re doing training camps for the squads that launch in September during that time. This September we’ll be sending 8 squads of around 30-50 (mostly 50) out to the nations. That means we had two training tamps in July. For me these were two very different training camps. Each training camp I was a trainer, which essentially is the leadership team that leads the new Racers through the training camp process. Prayer, listening to what they have to say, putting them in teams. We do it all.  I’ll remember each for different reasons. Reasons that I shall share now. Snapshot of training camp worship. The first one was a great time. I got to work with X squad, and they’re a fantastic bunch of people. What was truly special about this training camp w...