Ladies Paintball Trip

Commando crawling. Bullets flying. Voices screaming. Knuckles bleeding (just a couple). Nails breaking. That’s right, the women of Cru had a paintball shoot out on Saturday. We had about 10 women (including me; Stephanie) most of whom had never played paintball before, show up for an outdoor adventure. The weather was gorgeous and everybody had a lot of fun!

This fall some good friends from church let our ministry set up a paintball course on their property and we have had 3 different groups of students out to play paintball. Our friends Ned and Karen LaCelle graciously provided hot dogs and lemonade for the women as an after battle picnic lunch.

We played several rounds of paintball and then drew parallels from the “battlefield” to life on campus. We followed up the games with two really great discussions about the nature of communication and relationships. We talked about how men and women bond differently and discussed some of the barriers that keep us from having close friendships with other women. Through our discussion, a freshman named Kaitlyn shared about how our paintball experience helped her understand why she doesn’t feel close to her athletic teammates. Though she spends lots of time doing things with them (ie., practice) they don’t share the deeper level heart things that enable people, especially women, to bond.

We also talked about how life at Cornell can be isolating, and students can spend much of their time there just “hunkering down behind a barrier” rather than taking the risks involved to move towards other people. More than one woman shared that her “default mode” for life on campus is living life alone and often in isolation because that is easier. We talked about the Biblical truth from Ecclesiastes 4 that two are better than one, and how God’s design for us is that we live life together , in community, on a “team” with others; which can be more difficult but much more rewarding. A senior named Charlene pointed out the fact that celebrating alone, really isn’t much of a celebration – you need others to share it with. As I think about my own life, and all the facets of it, I would have to agree we are better together.