Yesterday, I tagged along to the Ultimate Frisbee playing with Darren with guys (and occasionally girls) from church yesterday. I wasn't planning to play, though I was in work-out clothes to be ready to go to the gym as soon as Christina was ready. I actually jumped right into playing, and wasn't too into it at first cause I was just learning the rules, and know that I'm not that great an athlete to begin with so I wasn't going to try very hard. With each game I played, I got more and more into it, and started to really get a work out. It was a lot of fun! More fun than just excercising on an elliptical machine at the gym, for sure. I wasn't very good, but fortunately it didn't matter. However, as I got into it, I also ate it a couple of times - once while trying to closely guard someone from the other team and I fell on the floor and scratched up my knee and my left palm, which started bleeding, and another time when I went for the frisbee in the end zone but it was too far, leaving me with enough momentum to very un-gracefully crash into the fence and scrape up my arm a little. Ouch! But it was funny. I had a great time, it was really cathartic.
What was interesting about this getting scraped up stuff was that it made me realize something kind of deep, an issue I didn't even really know I had - I'm afraid of getting my body scratched up in ways that may look unattractive, and in general, I'm afraid of being unfeminine! What the heck, right? I think it has something to do with being made fun of when I was younger for having very pale legs, and obvious marks all over them from an outdoorsy childhood. Have I given up running around and playing because of some sort of internalized fear about my appearance? Thinking about this also made me remember how I've wanted to learn to play guitar many times in my life, but every time I've started, I've remembered that it's going to give me calloused fingers and will require me to keep my nails short, and I decide not to learn. I've often been complimented on my "nice, soft, feminine hands" and maybe I just didn't want to mess with that by learning to play guitar. Why have I never questioned this in myself? I wonder what else I've held myself back from learning or experiencing simply because of a concern for my appearance/some internalized notion about what it is to be a "girl" or a "woman."
Since this has come up, I've realized in this small way just how much I may box myself into things. It seems learning new things and experiencing new things makes me happy, brings joy and excitement to my life, and I don't want to hold myself back from these things anymore because of any internalized worldly standards about things. Ultimately, it's up to me to find out what I like or don't like, what's my thing and what isn't - I want to try more things and be less afraid of the consequences, you know? I want to learn to not feel like I have to control my life. It's weird how that works for me, because I often feel driven to control things/situations/relationships in order to make life more easy for myself, to be able to maximize my happiness, when it seems like it's that drivenness that often thwarts my happiness, that chokes out opportunities for me to be stretched and to grow as a result, to learn how to really rely on God, to be a true blessing to others.
Oh God, forgive me for ways I've historically been more concerned with my appearance and how others think of me more than on my internal states, on my character, on becoming a more loving, humble, patient, gentle person. Help me to rely on you in all things, and especially in this new thing I've realized about myself - that I don't entirely know what it means for me to be a woman and how that should influence my life and decisions, how I should feel about myself as a woman. I pray that you give me the courage to explore new things and to open myself up to new experiences and people, opportunities for you to minister to me in new ways, opportunities for me to learn who it is you've created me to be, opportunities for me to learn to live abundantly in your love and truth.
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