International Women's Day: Hania Aitken on having 'scary, hard, wet my pants' kind of strength

Hania Aitken works at The Salvation Army's Blue Mountain Adventure Centre, has competed in international endurance competitions and runs her own fitness group. Hania's motivation for rediscovering her physical strength began with simply wanting her children to know she could be their mum AND ride a bike. Now, she's tackling all the scary things head-on because of Christ's encouragement to her, and inspiring other women to do the same.

We invite you to download and share this and our other International Women's Day testimonies with your community (link below). The following is a transcript from the video:

‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.’

That comes from Philippians 4:13. Most people have heard this passage before. For me, that's not something I always lived out. As a woman, I think I felt many times that there were things that were out of my reach because I'm a woman - in fact I don't think I was even aware of the extent of that. Just naturally in the way life was, I just kind of lived under that - not even knowing that it was a thing.

Now, I try to live this out: that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. 

Things that are scary.
Things that are hard.

Things that kind of make me want to wet my pants. *laughs*

I have four children and in the process of having those children, I can remember once my son saying that, you know, ‘Dad needed to take them on a bike ride because Mum didn't know how to ride a bike’. 

And at that stage I had other little babies and he had never seen me do things other than motherhood. And I realised I really owe it, not just to myself - to be all that Christ has called me to be, and to do anything through him - but I owe it to my children to model that. And through that I really hope to inspire other people as well. 

And so, I have tried to embrace hard things and tried to allow my mind to expand to the possibilities that Christ could have for me - even really scary things.

And I want my kids to know, my two girls, to realise that the world is their oyster and that through Jesus Christ they can actually achieve anything. That he is the author and creator of all good things, and that he gives us strength to accomplish stuff. 

And I want my boys to see that women are capable, that they can do amazing things and for me a lot of that has looked like a sort of physical rediscovering of strength.

And I've done things that I never dreamed that I could do, and through that, you know, I really hope that that has brought inspiration to other women - to feel that they can take on the thing that scares them, and that they can achieve amazing things through Christ and what his plan for us is.

We're celebrating International Women's Day by sharing women's testimonies of leadership during COVID in New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa Territory. We will be releasing new videos daily, and joining a worldwide video montage on The Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission's Facebook Page on March 8th. We invite you to share and view these stories with your community, to amplify their voices!

• CHECK OUT the other Salvationist Stories here (updated daily)
• VIEW the videos on Youtube (captions available)
• VIEW and SHARE from our Facebook Page
• DOWNLOAD the video files from OneDrive