Man Children and Me.

Apparently I woke up one day and was suddenly the mother of two abnormally large toddlers, and by toddlers, I mean two grown man-children who still think tooting on my thigh is just as funny the thirteenth time as it was the first incredibly awkward time it happened.

It’s either that, or reincarnation is a real thing and I was punished for my blatant sarcasm by being sent back to earth as a dude, which probably makes more sense than the mutant-children.

Regardless-in the past 48 hours I have been tooted on not once, not twice, but four times, and also shown three acceptable stances if one ever finds themself in need of dropping a deuce while standing up. Oddly enough, I don’t see that being a thing in my day-to-day life. ‘Excuse me, team. I am really interested in this budget meeting, but that coffee and the 40 grams of fiber brought to you by my morning Kashi are coming back with a vengeance. Please continue while I take a dump in the corner.’

I’m not a heathen, nor a boy, so in my girl-mind, I can not fathom a time short of life and death situations that I would ever poop in the upright standing position.

Spending my days with a combined 350 pounds of solid man has taught me several key lessons that I wish I could remove from my memory. Alas, I cannot and so they sit, emblazed on my feminine psyche, wreaking havoc on my perception of reality.

With girls, your weak moments are met with encouragement and comfort; tears shed commiserating your misery, their heart breaking for your own. With these two, my insecurities are met with brutal honesty, forcing me to reconcile my weakness with a resolute strength that exists simply because it must. Here, there is no coddling, no pats on the back, only the silent expectation to take a minute, recover and move on….followed by a toot joke and a few rounds of FIFA.

Little did I know when I started this journey called being a big kid, that it would so intimately involve strolling around with two of the most ridiculously athletic guys in town trailing somewhere behind me telling me I am prancing rather than walking (it’s not prancing, its my swagger step….it just happens to be quite prancing-esque).  When the three of us roll into a Saturday night hangout, blonde hair glowing in the neon lights, me looking slightly frazzled from the incessant touching/poking/picking/hitting that took place as I tried to caravan us all safely across town, them looking like gleeful children, beckoning the glances of single ladies everywhere, it strikes me just how ridiculous our posse is, the unnaturalness evident to everyone but us, the members of our tightknit gang.

I have always prided myself on my ability to ‘hang with the boys’. From standing in the schoolyard, picking an All Star kickball team with no remorse for the awkward kid left out, to senior prom when I convinced myself that I was going with a friend simply because I intimidated boys, not because no one wanted to deal with me, I dove across the gender line head first, unaware that consequences lie ahead. Yet, as I look back in my mid-twenties at the line so long blurred, it is hard to decipher where laid back ends and the loss of my femininity begins.

At some point in my life, I chose the path of least risk, allowing my vulnerability to recede so far into the corners of my heart, that it now only chooses to surface when those closest to me dig in deep, or when I become the filling of a whitey-tighty sandwich and resort to squeals of resistance to the hordes of man thigh up in my business. It’s actually rather terrifying.

And yet here is where I hit the metaphorical fork in the road, that moment when biblical truth marries real-life problems and creates a really confusing baby.

Much like my body, which is on a brief hiatus from the world, awaiting the arrival of my husband, kept secure under cardigans and appropriately lengthed skirts, why am I required to produce my heart for the world, airing my emotional laundry like it is meant for public viewing? My purity doesn’t revolve around keeping it my pants, but expands and infiltrates my entire being, weaving its way around my heart as I fight to block and tackle the constant barrage of war being waged around us.

The problem is evident, though, as I find myself closer associated by my guy friends to the dudes they swap stories with in the locker room than the alluring women they beg me to help them snag during our nights out. It is clear: I have become one of the bros in a big sort of way.

In a society that is trying to break gender rules and forge new norms under the guise of equality, it strikes me how backwards it can so easily get. Teetering on the edge, the modernist in me screams to take control and swallow my emotions, need no man and no bra and probably no razor….because that sounds like something those no-good men would create to make out lives miserable, but the soft voice of Christ gently nudges me off the ledge and back into the constructs of our Creator.

I made you, sweet one, He whispers as He heals the cracked pieces. I made you to laugh too loudly at inopportune times, to fight for victory even when no one is keeping score, and to write like no one is reading. I made you. It is that simple. It is that neat. It is that right. 

I am created in His image. When I can remember nothing else, that is what I cling to. The other questions and doubts I allow to sneak past my defenses are obsolete because when it is all said and done and the curtains close, I look like God, my perfect and holy salvation.