I have been watching Steve Harvey's new show "Little Big Shots" and loving it!! If you haven't heard of it, basically he has little kids with huge talent, or kids that are just funny. I think he is collecting them off YouTube to be honest.
Kids are so candid. I made an observation that I wanted to expand on a little in my thought process. A couple times I've noticed a certain scenario play out as he interviews the kids. He tells a little girl, "do you know you're very pretty?" and she just replies matter-of-factly, "yes." Now if you fast forward about 15 years, that scenario will play out very differently. It makes me sad. The innocence of childhood is not something we should have to grow out of. No one should be able to convince us that we're not pretty, smart, funny, etc. But they do.
I began to ponder. Kids live in a realm of trust. They have to. They will believe anything you tell them. They simply don't have enough information to not believe. As a baby/toddler, no one (hopefully) is telling this kids they are anything less than wonderful. No one goes up to a 3 yr old and tells her she's ugly, right? So it's easy to see why when Steve tells a 4 yr old she's very pretty, she agrees with him. When does it change? When do girls cross the line into believing instead that so many things are wrong with her appearance?
For me it was 6th grade. I'm sure for some it was even earlier. I was a happy kid with lots of friends in elementary school. The way our schools are set up, the elementary I went to fed into both middle schools, and it seemed most of my friends went to the other one, so I started 6th grade without many friends in place. I don't remember a lot of specifics from that era, but I know that a group of boys started taunting me. I learned pretty quickly that year that I didn't have "the right stuff" to fit in at this school. It came as a shock and I withdrew into a shell that I am still working my way out of 27 or so years later.
Now I'm looking at this with my current eyes and I'm wondering why the words of those specific kids were able to alter my life so significantly. I didn't even know them! They were no my friends, they didn't know me, they didn't matter! They were just kids with a mean streak, probably from their own wounds and insecurities. There were people in my life who did care about me, but for some reason, their words of affirmation weren't enough to take out the cruel words of my peers. It really doesn't make sense. Why do we listen to the opinions of those who don't matter?
I've thought lately about hearing "I love you" from someone. Our parents usually tell us they love us, but somehow it seems to matter more when we hear it from someone that is not "obligated" to love us. That in itself is a silly statement, but I think it feels true. We are silly creatures, swayed by negative words so easily.
Today, years down the road, I'm still struggling with my self worth, trying to believe that people like me, that I'm worth something, that I matter to someone. That who I am, in all my uniqueness is valuable. I started thinking, talking to God about this and He reminded me that no one who gets famous does so for "fitting in." He reminded me that He made each of us totally unique and meant for us to live in that uniqueness. Who told us that fitting in was the goal of life? It's not!! It's amazing how easily that lie has trapped us, bound us up in chains, and destroyed who we were created to be. None of us should have to fit in! This world is boring when everyone is the same. I am different than you, and it is right that it is so. We each have a part to play in this big body of people known as humanity. We can't all do the same things. The "famous people" that we all love got that way by standing out and being different!
When we try to fit in, when we try to do the things we think we need to do to be loved and accepted, we're actually shooting ourselves in the foot. The love and acceptance will never be fulfilling because we're not loved and accepted for who we really are. I've used this concept in talking about dating, but it applies to all relationships. If we are faking something, the love we receive for it isn't really for us. We feel more and more unloved because deep down we know that we aren't really exposing our true self. The only time we can really believe we are loved is when the lover sees our truest self. God always sees us, more clearly than we see ourselves, but with human relationships, we can only be truly loved to the extent we reveal ourselves to another.
How can we reverse the negative word destruction? By daily reminding ourselves of the positive words from people who really know us and love us. Reject the negative words as they come at us, and receive the positive ones. God has given us lots of words of affirmation in the Bible and we can ask Him for more personal ones directly. I am going to work on this more. I want to be aware of what words I'm allowing to have an effect on my soul. I've spent a lifetime believing the negative from people who don't matter, now I want to begin to believe the positive words from people who do matter.
