Diary of an All-American Girl

Welcome to my month’s diary. 

Albania was a plot twist. I wasn’t expecting it or the lessons I would learn while there. So, instead of writing some glossy fairy-tale story that makes it sound easy, here’s a journal entry I wrote while in Polican. These thoughts and feelings were real. The lessons I learned are real. And, they deserve a presentation that’s just as real. So, here you go…

Jan. 5th, 2022

“It’s weird to walk in something you’ve despised your entire life, a lie that you voluntarily spoke over yourself without prompting. I am strong; I can do it by myself, even if I am a woman. Act like a boy, and you’ll be able to take care of yourself. I carelessly lie to myself, convince myself of a truth that is not from the Lord. It’s a blessing the Lord doesn’t allow us to walk in those lies for long. Since being in Polican, Albania, I have struggled a lot. I can’t go anywhere without a male presence; I am one of maybe only 10 women seen consistently in public. I am overrun with testosterone, surrounded on all sides by the other sex. Nothing has ever felt so caging, so claustrophobic in my life. The Lord has sent me out, a sheep among wolves, or at least that’s how it feels. The enemy whispers in my ear the lie that women and weak are synonymous. And, no matter how hard I buck and yell, his lie prevails. How can I combat his lie with a truth I’m scared of? How can I tell him that women are strong when I’ve never believed it myself? 

I have yet to figure out if this experience was a tactic of the enemy to further scare me into his lie or if the Lord simply used a scary situation for His good will. For years, I’ve been the protector, the oldest always looking out for those younger than me. But, since being in Polican, I have seen a new side of myself, one that isn’t often let out of her cage. I am the youngest here and a girl. In the last two weeks, the founded, mature, and strong Caitlyn that Sol Sisters fostered has been whittled down to the child-like, emotional girl I recognize from my childhood. Among this atmosphere, I find my girlish self, the one I abandoned long ago for maturity. I didn’t even know she was still there, hiding deep in the confines of my mind, waiting for the moment I might let her loose again. 

I wonder if the Lord warned her of her coming liberation in Albania since she seemed to free herself so easily the minute we crossed the border. If so, I wished He would’ve warned me too; though, if He had, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have tried to stop her. 

Now that she’s out, however, I can assure you that the girl I have become will not last. She is the truth of the Lord, the two french braids handcrafted by the Lord for a purpose. The Frankenstein I created from the lies of the enemy could not possibly stand against the Spirit God has given her. People aren’t created to live off lies from this world but rather the truth that has already been spoken over us. 

So, what is that truth? 

We were created with intention, every minute detail specifically chosen to reflect the life the Lord has planned.

Now, do you see why I struggled? 

For twenty-two years, I rebelled against the Lord’s decisions. I hated my curly hair. I ran from my missional calling. I wished I were a boy. And, rather than allowing the Lord to speak life into those struggles, I adapted, finding lies disguised as truths. I bound them to myself, molding them to my skin to create a false armor of preservation. It only makes sense that it hurts like hell while the Lord strips them away. 

The first lie removed was that only men were made to be strong. Since forever it seems, women were deemed the weaker sex. In fact, society would go as far as to consider them synonyms: woman and weak. Stay in the kitchen, raise the children, tend to the home: all lies. Fight for your right to education, good luck. If you get it, stay away from sports; your fragility won’t be able to withstand the brute force. Your opinions aren’t strong enough to be heard, might as well stay silent. Now, your emotions are too strong; we told you you weren’t strong enough to handle it. 

The world seems convinced that women aren’t strong since our strength doesn’t appear the same as men’s. Our physicality may not rival the brute force the Lord has instilled in our male counterparts, but that does not deem us weak; it simply means our strength looks different. The female’s strength does not find itself in a woman’s physicality but in her passivity, her willingness to be the support in the background rather than the hero on the front line. The Lord says in Psalm 144: 12, “…May you daughters be like graceful pillars, carved to beautify a palace.” The liar, in his attempt to mislead, disregards the first line completely, placing his focus on the act of beautifying. He tells us that a woman’s sole purpose is to make something pretty, a mere decoration in God’s grand scheme for Man. He fails, however, to see the true role the Lord has given her: a pillar. The Lord describes woman as a graceful pillar. As architectural pieces, pillars are not used solely for decoration. Rather, they were often used to help bear the building’s weight. A pillar is meant to stand firm under the building’s pressure, providing support in their unwavering strength. Therefore, the truth of the Lord is that women and strength are in fact synonyms. Women are the pillars of their families, bearing the weight of their burden and supporting them by standing strong. A woman’s strength does not come from their beauty but from the role the Lord has given her. 

The second lie, then, is that a woman’s passivity is evidence of their weakness. Society encourages us to hide behind a man because it’s safer. Again, our physical strength cannot rival that of a man, so why bother trying. The unfortunate reality is, I believe, part of that is truth. Women and men were created differently; our bodies were built to handle differing roles. The male body was made physically stronger (as a result of their curse from Adam to do hard labor), and it’s not fair of me, as a woman, to hate them for that. But, this is where the truth was manipulated. In an attempt to show the world our strength, feminism has allowed us to envy male strength. We roar to anyone who will listen: we are strong, independent women, and we can do anything a boy can do. We boil that envy in anger until it burns into a deep hatred for ourselves and our male counterparts. We hate ourselves because we know we’re fighting a losing battle; we hate them because they’re winning and are unaware of it (sometimes). Thus, the sexes are divided, pit against each other in the enemy’s unfair game of sharks and minnows. 

I, however, do not believe the division of the sexes was in the Lord’s intended design. Rather, we were meant to stand in unity, two halves joined together by the Lord. 

So, why then don’t we get past our differences and see each other for what we were truly meant to be? 

Well, that would require women to come face to face with two very ugly truths– one of them actually being ugly while the other only seemingly ugly from the outside. The first is the truth, though distorted into a lie, that women have praised themselves for generations: I am a strong, independent woman, who doesn’t need a man. I was guilty of this for years, telling myself that I didn’t need a man, I simply wanted one. In my mind, there was a very obvious distinction between the two, but if you asked me to explain it to you, I would probably settle for some vague quote I saw on Instagram. With that being said, in these last weeks of the Race, I have found the exact opposite to be true. In Polican, the presence of my male teammates is required if I wanted to go anywhere. As independent as I was, it seems I still needed a man to even leave the house. It was, like I’ve said, claustrophobic, as it would be for any American woman rooted in the lie that her strength could be that of a man physically. It was only after the Lord tore out that lie, revealing to me the true strength of femininity, that He could even approach the second lie. 

Though, being the stubborn person I am, I jerked out of the Lord’s reach every time He tried to rip that lie from my armor. I told the Lord that Polican’s patriarchal culture wasn’t going to stop me from clinging to the belief that I could handle my own. I should have thought it through before daring the Lord; I know better. 

At six in the morning of January 1st, our team was sitting at the bus station, waiting to catch a ride to Tirana. We were tired after staying up the night before and as usual, we were running a little late. Tensions were a bit high, in my head as per usual, and I was irritated by some bickering, so I decided to stand a little bit away from our group. More people slowly showed up over time, including a man still experiencing his drunkenness from the night before. When I offered to show him the time on my watch, I didn’t know just yet the commotion he would soon cause. 

As the bus rolled into the station, the man approached the bus door, fists raised. I later found out that the bus had almost run him over, which instiaged his fit of rage. He was jerking around– punching, smacking, slapping, anything that could inflict some sort of pain. His loud voice was a bomb echoing in my ears. I don’t know why loud noises and yelling trigger me; I only know that at that moment, his yelling made me anxious. My hands began to tremble, something foreign to me. The fear I felt in that experience was nothing I have felt before. As I’ve said before, I’ve always been the protector. I am used to finding myself on the front line, facing whatever obstacle is rearing its ugly face. But, contrary to my usual response, I found myself sinking to the background, running from the danger and abandoning the rest of my team to deal with it on their own. Upon realizing my cowardice behavior, I grew angry with myself. Why was I so scared? I could handle it; I was a strong, independent woman…right? It was after this thought entered my mind that the lie I had built my identity upon crumbled. The man was huge, at least 6 foot 4 and 200 lbs, much too big for a 5 foot 2 girl like myself to handle. 

Habits, however, are hard to break. I’m not gonna lie and say I wasn’t tempted to throw a punch myself. In fact, a very vivid image of me punching the guy in the face before running to hide behind some boys on my team did cross my mind. Thank the Lord that I’m not as “independent” as I thought I was because this would be a very different story if that had happened. But, back to the story at hand. It was among the yelling and almost getting run over by a bus myself that I realized the necessity for my male teammates. 

Just as the Lord created women with a strength and a role, He also made men for his intended purposes– one of which is to protect. For the majority of my life, men have always seemed the predator, something to be very cautious around. By the time I graduated high school, every female in my family– with the exception of me, my sister, and my mom– had been assaulted or harassed by a man. Little did I know, I would join the ranks four years later after my own experience with a drunk friend. So, though I act surprised, my reaction to this experience is pretty reasonable. However, because I was always protecting, I never allowed myself to react in such an “embarrassing” manner. The only difference this time around, I was surrounded by men who were fully capable of protecting me, which left me to face the second ugly truth.

The second ugly truth, that isn’t as ugly as it seems, is the dreaded “s-word:” submission. There is no faster way to piss off a crowd of women than to tell them to submit. Years and generations of fighting for our own recognition has turned submission into a curse word, a derogatory term thrown on the weak. So, you can imagine the predicament I was in when the Lord asked me to step into passivity and submission at the bus stop. To submit myself to my male teammates was not only admitting to myself that I didn’t have everything handled but also destroying the foundation on which I built my identity. If I submitted to their protection, I was weak, or at least that’s what the enemy was whispering into my ear that morning. 

I had drawn away again, trying to hide myself in the shadows. Samantha, who noticed my isolation, soon came to my side. It was with her arm slung around my shoulders that the attacker approached. I thought I would crumble under the weight of his presence, my eyes glued to the asphalt beneath his Reebok sneakers. Rather, the opposite happened; I stood firm, though not solely on my own strength. The men on my team surrounded us: two on the left, one on the right, and one in front. I had never felt so safe. As the boys stood boldly in front, the Lord’s voice spoke gently, “Caitlyn, I have put you in a place where you are protected.” 

Polican, in its entirety, felt like a threat to me and my identity. The culture attacked my strength, the customs my independence, and the people my role. Everything I believed about being a woman, every lie the enemy sold me since I was young, was challenged in the mountain-sides of Albania. But, despite the pain and fear brought with change, the Lord had secured my safety, placing me on a team that would aid in my growth. The boys I once viewed as a threat now walked in the role the Lord instilled in them. And, their protection of me and the girls on my team acted as an exemple, an expectation for other men in our lives. 

So, I was left with a very critical decision: submit to their protection and for once allow myself to be the protected or continue living in the false identity created from the lies of the enemy. The opportunity presented itself when the boy who had been standing at the front stepped away to find out more information about the bus. With the potential threat still standing in front of us, the other boys remained still, only one moving forward to stand directly in front of me, blocking half of my body with his own. I don’t know if he knew what he was doing at that moment but his motion presented my two options: submit or rebel. 

Sometimes, I’m still surprised by my choice, knowing the amount of growth the Lord had to bring me through in order for the right decision to be made. But, before I could think, I found myself stepping behind him, hiding in his shadow. My act of submission, though foreign, felt natural. Also, not only did it guarantee my safety, but my decision to align myself behind him allowed both of us to embrace the roles the Lord had given us. He, along with the rest of the boys on the team, walked in the authority of the Lord and handled the situation, protecting the girls that had been secretly placed in their care. Meanwhile, the girls, more specifically myself, embraced our strength and passivity by staying in the background and supporting the boys with our trust and submission. 

Submission is probably the hardest thing I’ve had to learn while on the Race. And, I’m not even remotely close to being done with it. However, from this single experience I’ve had with it, I can assure you I made the right decision and though it will be hard, I hope to continue walking in this submission that the Lord has taught me.”

———-

So, yeah, that was Albania in a nutshell. My squad and I have since left Albania. After being in Polican, Albania for two months, we thank the Lord for the lessons learned and the friends made while there. The country and town were beautiful, and I will remember it for years to come. 

As of now, we are in Romania, where we will be for another two months. I have 5 months left on the Race but that feels like an eternity. After Romania, we have plans to go to South Africa, Lesotho, and Eswatini. My time on the Race has been hard and the growth exponential; though, I wouldn’t change it even if I could. I don’t know, ask me in a couple months and maybe my answer will be something different, but until then….stay safe!