My chacos have been walking around the world (literally). If it’s too cold, a pair of socks is added, but they’re still worn. To church. To school. To hoe a field. To coffee shops. To home-visits. To parties. To wash dishes. To walk through the desert. To walk through water. To everywhere, to do everything. But this week, they landed themselves in Serbia, where it’s often freezing and usually raining. So, they were worn once again, but this time to a place they hadn’t been before…a shoe store, where a pair of black boots were purchased…and they haven’t been worn since.
“Cute” hasn’t been a look I’ve often tried to achieve on the Race. Especially not the first few months. At first I didn’t think it was that important, that appearance is just something that I’ve “sacrificed” for the year. But then I began to notice how I was carrying myself differently, trying to disappear (kind of difficult when you’re significantly taller than the entire population of people you’re around), feeling like I couldn’t be taken seriously because I looked like I didn’t care enough to try. Even when I had a pretty good combination of clothes going, my chacos were rarely “appropriate” attire for so many occasions. This especially hit while I was in Thailand. My team and I were invited to a “thank you” dinner by the teachers at the school we had been teaching at, and we were encouraged to look cute. Trying to get ready for that evening was particularly difficult. I wanted to blame my clothes, but I knew it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything cute, but rather that I didn’t feel cute in anything. This bothered me. I hadn’t really struggled with self-image in a while. But then God started talking to me about what was really going on. It wasn’t that I was finding fault with me, but rather that I’d expected myself to be okay with just one kind of outfit…for an entire year.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I don’t really have a certain “look”, but rather like 5 or 6 different ones. They tell you to bring on the Race what you’d normally wear, and I did…but I only brought one kind of “normal”. I didn’t bring anything nicer than a plain v-neck tee shirt to wear with jeans and chacos. I totally ignored the fact that I also like to wear heels, and dress up, and sometimes even wear lipstick.
Obviously heels aren’t a practical shoe choice for my current life, but I definitely needed something that I felt reflected the beauty I feel inside. So, I went out and bought myself a pair of black boots, a new-to-me sweater, and put on some lipstick. That was the first day in 5 months that I’d walked in boots. I felt so normal! Not because of the clothes I was wearing, but because I was going on an outing, and I was wearing what I would normally want to wear, not just the best of whatever I could throw together.
After this experience, I wrote this letter:
Dear appearance,
You’re not my main priority. You’re not something I want to be concerned with all the time. However, I’ve acted like you have no place in my life at all…at least not a significant enough one to actually do anything about you. That’s not good. I don’t want it to hurt my ministry, but I also recognize it’s been hurting me. My posture has fallen, I’m not aware of how things do/don’t fit, and I feel like I usually look like I didn’t really try. That’s why I bought some makeup and new clothes. Not to cover me up, but to present inner-me on the outside–bright-eyed and flushed-cheeked! I want to look like I value what God’s created, and that I’m inviting others to do the same. You’re not my main priority, but you are important.
God’s shown me how feeling cute or pretty isn’t in what I’m wearing, but rather how/why I’m wearing it. Below are two pictures of when I’ve felt especially pretty while on the Race. The first is me in my “normal” ministry clothes in Cambodia, surrounded by the kids who lived at the church where we would teach English every night. The second is me in my new outfit and lipstick, ready for Marissa’s birthday party. Both are “normal” for me to wear, just for different kinds of “normal” occurrences. I’m now prepared for both.
