the beginning

Wow, so it's already been like a week and a half. I really want to just jump in and talk about the most recent stuff, but Xan advised us to kindof start from the beginning. But where does this story begin? It certainly doesnt begin with the first day of work today, nor even with dinner with an amazing man of God on Monday night. Neither was the beginning that week long backpacking trip through the snow of Wyoming, or even the first day, the day we all arrived in CO and met for the first time. It's possible it begins months earlier, when I got a myspace invitation from some people I'd never heard of, while reading a book by that same man of God that described my heart perfectly.

I suppose that is when this story begins, for that is how I heard of Training Ground, getting a friend request online while going through Way of the Wild Heart. However, my story, like the other guys' stories, begins much earlier, years earlier. And like all our stories, it begins with a question. And that question is what has haunted and driven me all my life. Do I have what it takes? Am I a man? Can I do it? And, as Dan said, it is what has driven me out here.

The heart is a deep and dangerous thing, and so few of us ever know our heart, or God's heart for us, much less ever truly live from that heart. The growing unrest that has developed in my spirit over the last many years from knowing that I was not living from my heart has propelled me into this quest to find it, and with it my identity. A great sage named John reminded me recently that the danger of the heart is not only its impact on you, but also the impact it will have on all those you will ever love. All the lives that will be touched and affected, over how many decades, they will be touched for good or for ill depending on how much you know your own heart and how you deal with your own brokenness.

In reading his many words I got a glimpse of what I needed, and in finding Xan and Cory and what they were doing I knew I had found a path to some of the many things I knew I desperately needed. And so here I am. A four hour plane ride, a couple more waiting at the airport, and a few more driving around Colorado, I finally made it to the place I'd be living for three months and the guys I'd be living there with. I was the first to meet Xan and Cory that first day, last Monday, as they picked me up at the Denver airport, then we got Dan from his flight into the Springs, and then met up with Josh and Campbell in a McDonalds parking lot. How do you describe instant friendship, an immediate bond? I don't know, but the fact that we were talking and joking like old friends within hours seemed like coincidence to none of us.

Perhaps it was knowledge- the fact of what we all shared and knowing that we all shared it, that which had brought us here in the first place. Regardless, we may have become instant friends that first night, but that first week brought us together as brothers on a common journey, and the rest of that journey together this summer will solidify this band, this fellowship.

More on all this later...
Adam