Here’s something that—as a girl—you’ll read in a hundred blogs and never really understand until you actually get out on Race:
Some days you’re just going to want to feel like… well, like a girl.
For me, that day has been everyday lately. It’s funny too because now there’s really no one to even be tempted to impress. I’m on a team that consists completely of girls, working at a children’s home where the boys are all either below sixteen or over sixty. There’s no pressure to look pretty for anyone but Jesus, but I’ve never in my life desired to feel beautiful so badly. There’s something deeper there, I think.
I told my friend Gai, who happens to be our translator, over and over again, “I just want to feel like a girl. I just want to feel pretty.” And she says, over and over, “You are beautiful, Heather.”
The other day, when she said this for what may well be the three hundredth time in eight days, I stopped. Me? Beautiful?
If you’re a girl of any age you know that there is a distinct difference between how you feel about yourself and how others see you. And maybe this is a travesty to us, because I think that others have such insight into not only who we are but who we are becoming. It would be easy to fall into the pattern of believing the lies I’ve believed all my life: that I’m not beautiful, or not feminine, or not worthy of being either of those things.
It would be easy to hide my heart behind the Race and “missionary appropriate” clothes (aka, only dry-fit or camp-ready clothes) instead of embracing my love of skinny jeans and pretty dresses. It would be easy to forgo mascara because there’s no one to impress instead of putting it on because there really is something about wearing mascara that makes me happy. It would be easy to say that because there are no boys on my team, I don’t have to try to look my best. I can just be “myself” in sweatpants and holey t-shirts.
But I realized this week that if I choose to believe that, I’m just copping out.
I know that I felt pretty today as I slipped into skinny jeans and flats, normal attire at home but such a luxury on the Race. I felt pretty when I blow dried my hair for the first time in four months. I felt pretty after my massage.
But I also felt pretty barefoot in the garden, up to my elbows in Thai basil and cilantro and cabbage. I feel pretty in the kitchen stirring a pot of pork soup, from a pig I helped butcher. I even sometimes feel pretty when I’m sweaty and out of breath from working out.
Yep, I really did butcher a pig. No lie.
So what is beauty? Am I only beautiful in a dress, wearing makeup? Or only barefoot, working in the garden? What does it mean to be beautiful, to be a beautiful woman? And how do I walk it out now?
