I have no idea who started this, but even when Josh and I worked here, the counselors referred to each other as “male staff” and “female staff”. Over the recent beach weekend, floating by from the middle of the lake, one of female staff members shouted my way,

“That’s what we could do for choice activity! Yoga on the dock!”

She wasn’t necessarily even talking to me, but in the afternoon sun, as I came up out of my soft forward fold, instantly I saw evening and shade. I could see us spreading out on the sand with our towels. Within seconds the idea bounced back their direction.

“Yes. Or on the beach!”

And that’s as far as it went, which was fine by me. I love spontaneous ideas like this. Entering into the worlds of possibility and ideas…it’s like the video game I could play for hours and never get tired. Though nine times out of ten the idea drifts away, it satisfies my inner child, keeping the creative spark inside of me from completely dying out.

So when one of the girls approached me during breakfast this morning, asking if there was a particular day this week that would be good for me to lead beach yoga, I froze. This isn’t how things typically go in a day. Coming up with ideas like doing yoga on the dock or beach is the easy part, the fun part. She didn’t know what she was asking of me.

Get me with one or two people, and yes, we’re doing yoga on the beach, rubbing sand all over our bodies as a natural exfoliant, and running into the warm brown-watered lake to wash it off. Yoga on the beach would be “that time” to be forever remembered, and into the years of being old and grey, whenever we were together, we’d bring it up.

At first I told her I didn’t think I could do it, but I really wanted to do it, with them, for them, or if I did, I would have to get over my issues first. Yoga is another one of those things that sounds useless and trendy, but besides lots of time, rest, and the generous grace of God, it is something that has truly helped my body these past few months.

I told her I could do it, not today, but any of the others. While I was eating my breakfast I also started thinking that we could even use this choice activity time with the girls to talk about being created in the image of God and Jesus’s overflowing unconditional love for each one of us. In one day I’ve bitten off every nail I’ve grown and not been biting since April.

She was asking me to commit. She asking me to plan. She was asking me to think and work and show up. Those aren’t even the things that bothered me most. She was asking me to get over my much weaker self-confidence, at least when it comes to doing something different that I’m not used to. She was asking me to face my fears.

I have a fear of doing things in front of other people. And I’m happy to do it. Please. Finally. My own inner child has been driving me nuts. There comes a point when the child isn’t happy be a child anymore. They have to grow up. They have to be able to be something else other than little. They have to, they have to, they have to give back.