On our last night in Vietnam, my team went out to dinner together. As we were getting ready to go, the other five girls on my team were getting a little more dressed up than usual – putting on makeup and/or wearing nicer outfits than they would on a normal day. I, however, was in one of my go-to World Race outfits: a pair of basketball shorts and one of my Arsenal jerseys. (For those of you not familiar, Arsenal is an English soccer team of which, thanks to my former teammate Jarred, I’m now a fan).
We hadn’t agreed as a team to all dress up together, so I wasn’t being intentionally defiant. A lot of women on the Race like to take advantage of any opportunities to look and feel like they do at home, and I’m simply not one of them. No big deal. Well, no big deal for my teammates at least. Although they had no problem with my choice of attire, I felt a little out of place.
Then we walked downstairs to the lobby of our hotel, and ran into another team of six girls. Five of them were dressed like my teammates were, and then I noticed Kelsey. Like me, she was wearing gym shorts and an Arsenal jersey. We all laughed at this parallel, and I felt a little better about myself knowing I wasn’t the only female racer who had opted for this outfit. As we ventured out into the streets of Ho Chi Minh City to find a restaurant, I was struck with a thought.
“Who said that you needed permission to be yourself?”
Hmm, interesting thought. If I hadn’t seen Kelsey in the lobby that night, it was still perfectly fine for me to have worn that jersey. While affirmation, however unintentional, is all well and good, it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Comparison stinks – even the most confident person in the world has wrestled with it here and there. And this night reminded me that the way I am doesn’t make me any less of a teammate, any less of a racer, any less of a woman, or any less of a person than anyone else around me. It’s a simple lesson really, but sometimes we make it more complicated than it has to be.
Be yourself. Anything less is an insult to who God made and intended you to be.
