I’m living with a group of women who frequently use the term salty. It’s applied in reference to someone who may be feeling a bit frustrated, irritable, and prone to mild rage…at least that’s my interpretation. We have a running joke in our squad leader group that we are #inwiththeteens since we are 3 women in our mid-twenties, leading a group of primarily 18 to 19-year-olds. Salty seems to apply to that mentality. One of the women on the squad even has a t-shirt with the word SALTY plastered across the chest and her team sometimes assigns it to each other when one is being particularly salty during the day.
Saltiness. Salty. Salt. That word is thrown around on this squad, but it’s also mentioned in the Bible several times.
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. Matthew 5:13
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Colossians 4:6
One of my coaches from my original race, Deon, does a teaching on saltiness. He talks about how our lives should be like salt in that they should make people thirsty for the Lord. I guess those teachings sunk in because this is the question the Lord has been asking me:
What is the salt of your life making people thirsty for? You or me?
Ugh, who are they thirsty for indeed. It’s a convicting question and one that I will likely be using as a mantra, particularly for this season. I’m co-leading a squad of 51 women. There are 8 teams that we travel to and 3 of us. It can be easy to feel like we aren’t doing enough because we can’t realistically all go to every single team in each of the countries that we will be visiting. I’ve come to learn that I’ve been called to lead such a large group because of its size. It’s pushing my capacity to love in the best way possible (Gap I is so great), but also reminding me of my own limitations…which is the whole point. If I ever get to the point where the squad (or anyone I interact with in life) needs me more than the Lord, then I’ve missed it.
I want my life to be salty. The good kind of salt that makes people thirsty for more of Him because being around me has given them a taste of their King. In short, I want to be the right kind of salty.
