Stickers don't have to stick!

Warning... know before you read this that it's the philosopher in me speaking, so these are some really deep thoughts... I tend to be a verbal processor. Poor Keith has to listen to me process things. He's such a good listener. My quiet husband processes things in that little head of his. Then opens his mouth and wisdom comes out. When I open mine, feelings and emotions come out first... eventually I sort through it to get to why I'm feeling a certain way. I think that's why I like to write, it helps me process things and seems to help me get to the root of what's going on. 
A friend of mine was telling me how her daughter's feelings were hurt by another little girl on the bus the other day. It's so easy for us to say to our kids, "Oh, don't pay any attention to her, she's just a bully." As though they should be able to dismiss other people's opinions easily. Our intention is to help our kids learn to shake things off and not be easily hurt by others opinions because we know they will face people like that all their life.  Ellie has a little girl in her class now who is unkind to certain people (including Ellie) just about every day. I told Ellie, "Since we don't know what's going on in her life, just assume she might be passing on some unkindness that has been passed on to her. Let's pray for her and ignore her mean comments." I'm trying to teach her not to reflect the ugliness shown her, but to rise above it and have compassion since we don't know all the circumstances in another person's life. Then the other night as I was putting Ellie to bed she said, "I don't want daddy to go with me to the third grade breakfast in the morning". I said, "Why not?" She said, "Because the kids make fun of his bald head." I said, "Daddy is a very handsome man and a lot of men choose to shave their heads." Then I asked her, "What if daddy was embarrassed to have breakfast with you because his friends said, "Your little girl doesn't look like my little girl?" She said, "I'm not embarrassed by daddy, I just don't want them to hurt his feelings." Oops, my bad!  I thought she was embarrassed by him when she was only trying to protect him. I said, "Ellie, don't worry, daddy can handle it." So what's my point??? I guess that people have opinions, and sometimes their opinions hurt us. It's easy to think our kids problems are small, and ours are big. But when their peers judge them, it's as big to them as it is to us when our peers judge us. I got a little taste of that just yesterday, only this woman was not intending to hurt me, she just insulted me by accident. I was with my friend who has a baby and helping her by pushing the stroller. The woman at the counter said, "Awww, is that your grandchild?". Ouch! But that in itself is not an impossibility. I just turned 46 and I do have a married son who is 24 and he and his wife could have a child right now. (I had my first child when I was 21 and made my mom a grandma at 42.) But here's the kicker, my friend who was with me is 39. The woman at the counter then commented, "Sorry, you two just look so much alike." And you didn't assume I was the kids aunt!? So that would make me the mother of a 39 year old. Do the math... Double Ouch! So what do you do when you get a jab to your ego like that? You can't say, "Well perhaps the woman is just being unkind because she's been treated unkindly." She wasn't trying to insult me.  I'll let you in on the ugly egocentric thought process that went on in my head... Get ready, it's pretty gross!  In my head, I quickly ran to my own defense... "I've been running this morning and I do have on my running clothes with a hat and no make-up after all. Then there's my friend who has on make-up and heels and happens to look like she's in her 20's even though she's 39. That must be it. I couldn't look 60 years old could I?" I know, I told you it was ugly, just being real. Later I called and whined to one of my sisters about it. Jeannie's 11 months older than me and has been insulted similarly. We of coarse stroked each others egos and said how crazy the woman was. Sisters are always good for that! That was only a temporary fix though.  I started thinking about how our society's values are pretty messed up. We value people who have youth, beauty, talent, wealth, education... Our society mistakenly judges them as having more worth than people who don't have these things. Our world is so upside down. Think about it. Is a younger person worth more than an older person? And what about beauty, isn't it in the eye of the beholder? Is a person who has been given talents worth more as though the talent originated with them and wasn't a gift to be used to serve others? And wealth... even if you have "earned" it, didn't someone give you the ability to do that. Now I agree some people toss away their gifts, but can we even be the judge of that when we don't know their particular  story? Isn't a person's worth determined by their creator anyway? Why do we think we have the authority to determine each others worth? How can we live in this world and not conform to it's crazy system? In my head, I know those things are not important, but why does the flesh seek them out? Why do we spend so much time and money to hold on to the things that will inevitably pass away? It's such a trap, a cobweb, a tar-baby (remember Uncle Remus?) How can we be set free from that game that we will never win? How can a person's comment hold the power to make us feel differently about ourself. I didn't suddenly become old when the woman made the comment, what became different was how I viewed myself. And what if I am getting old? Isn't that what we all do? Why should that matter? I know that things will cause us pain, but I don't think we're intended to live there, I think we're intended to learn and grow from it.  When I feel pain like this, a red flag goes up and tells me that I'm living out of my flesh again. That is a scary place to be because I'm at the mercy of other people's opinions. I view myself through their skewed lenses. I'm forgetting that what God values is what is really valuable, not what the world values. The world values things that pass away. From time to time I find myself in situations that expose something in me that God wants to free me from. He doesn't want us to be controlled by others opinions or to value things that pass away.  I've learned that the game the world plays is this, we perform a certain way that gets the approval of our culture and hide the things that get us disapproval, because we think that approval is what gives us worth.  It's just insane if we really say it out loud! 
I just wrote on my list the other day to pick up a couple of copies of the book You Are Special, by Max Lucado because I thought it would be helpful for my girls and my friend's daughter who was being teased. It's funny how things happen. I wanted to get it to teach my children that no one has the power to take away their joy unless they give it to them. I know that others' opinions only affect us as far as we believe what they say about us. I guess I didn't realize how much I needed the message myself. This book is not just for kids. 
Sorry Max, I'm gonna attempt to paraphrase your book here. The book is about a town of little wooden people (us) whose opinions of each other are in the form of stickers. The wooden people give stars to the people that have qualities they value like intelligence, beauty, talent...  and dots to people with qualities they devalue. In the story Punchonello, a boy with lots of dots, gets so depressed about all his dots that he doesn't want to leave the house. Then one day while looking out the window, he notices a girl with no stars or dots, Lucia (Her name means light. She's a christian.) Punchonello is amazed at her freedom to not be weighed down with dots or stars. (Imagine, not allowing other people's opinion of you to stick. Not giving others that power over you? If their opinion didn't cause you to view yourself differently.) He asks her why the stickers don't stick to her? She says, because she spends time with Eli every day (the maker of all wooden people, God). So Punchonello goes to meet with Eli himself. He asks Eli why stickers don't stick to Lucia. Eli tells him that the stickers only stick if you let them. If what others say matters to you, then the stickers stick. Who are other wooden people to tell you whether you have value or not? Whimicks don't have the authority to tell other whimicks their worth... only the creator of the whimicks can do that. The only thing that matters is who your maker says you are. And your maker says you are special just the way you are. If you decide what others say is more important (or truer) than what your maker says, then you will carry around these debilitating labels that make you feel superior or inferior to other wooden people. If you spend time with your Maker, he will tell you the Truth about yourself and others and the Truth will set you free. Spending time with God will help you trust God's love and the more you trust His love, the less you care about the opinions of others.  My apologies to Max for paraphrasing his book... it's much better when he writes it. We will always be at the mercy of other people's opinions of us, and even our own opinions of us, until we decide... only His opinion is what matters because His opinion is what is true. Oh and by the way, as Ponchunello was leaving, one of his dots fell off.  Notice it didn't fall off when he met Lucia and was told about Eli, and not even when Eli told him he was special just the way he was, but when Ponchunello said to himself, "I think He really means it". It was when he believed what his maker said about him was true. There is a way to live outside of all this mess and it's only through Him. What if we all viewed people the way God does with unsurpassable worth? What if every time we caught ourself taking away a person's worth with our opinions about what we view as good or bad, we stopped ourself and chose to give them their true worth? What if we treated ourself that kindly?