I just got a little afraid. A friend of mine just got back from Panama. She was working in the same place where I will be in a few short weeks. She posted a video on Facebook that was so beautiful. In a few short minutes she made me laugh out loud and get teary eyed. But mostly she scared me. Not because of being in a foreign land or being out in the middle of nowhere. Not the odd berries they were eating or the long walk across the river on a narrow bridge. None of the things you would expect scared me. What scared me was the mud. Not the mud itself, but what I thought when I saw the mud. Although I was raised by a zoologist that had me out snake hunting as a small child and in the Tensaw Swamps catching alligators for the zoo’s new exhibit at the age of 10, I am a city girl and a very “girly” girl.
Don’t get me wrong- I am not afraid of hard work. I help Tim lifting very heavy sound equipment and move furniture regularly. I am strong. But since I married Tim I have lived in the city and vacationed in 5 star hotels in other big cities. No more camping or hanging out in the swamps! I am old now and seeing all of the young people sliding in the mud face first and laying around on the ground with the native kids made me take a deep breath. And I am going with an even younger group than the one in the video! It made me wonder if I can still be that free and relaxed. It made me wonder if I have ever been that free and relaxed!
The whole reason I wanted to go on a mission trip after graduation instead of going on a fancy trip or throwing a party was to reconnect to my faith and do something totally different from the things I had done at school. I wanted to do something life changing. You always think about changing other people’s lives, but I have lived long enough and been on enough youth trips to know that usually my life is the one changed the most. I could see that happening as I watched the video.
One thing I feel like I never really got at school was how to let go completely while on stage. I learned to put the audience out of my mind from a fear stand point and become my character and live in that character’s world. But I was never really relaxed enough to throw out my inhibitions and really just feel the full emotions. In Acting 3 class I did get that involved in my character once during a Shakespeare monologue of all things and it scared the hell out of me! I thought I might not recover, but I did. When I did the same monologue again for my final I could not recreate that feeling, the freedom, the pain and anguish, the total immersion into that grieving character. The professor told me it still came across, but I was sad not to really FEEL it again.
While watching the video of my friend’s Panama trip, I felt how totally in the moment, alive and present all of the people were as they worked and played with the native children. It scared me. Can I be that committed? Can I be that fearless? Can I submerge myself in my work? Can I ignore the mud and just feel the joy? I surely want to! I think it will make me a better person, a better actress, a better wife and mom, a better Christian. So I am getting my head right the next couple of weeks, putting fear aside, and embracing the mud.
