Being Me…

Growing up, I was labeled as shy, simply because I enjoyed spending time alone, reading and listening to music.  I didn’t see anything wrong with that, but the more others labeled me as shy, the more I found myself becoming self-conscious of that label. 

In middle school, I had an English teacher who decided to call me “smiley” because in her opinion, I didn’t smile enough.  What she or anyone else didn’t seem to grasp was that I was simply being me, and the more they labeled me, the less I smiled and the shyer I became, even though I had never thought of myself as shy or not smiling enough. What no one saw behind that “unsmiling” and “shy” exterior (according to others) was a very serious young girl who did a lot of thinking about things (perhaps overthinking and worrying).

I took things to heart, and I wore my heart on my sleeve (as the saying goes).  If I was happy, my face showed it, if I was sad, my face showed it, and if I was mad, my face definitely showed it.  If I had something to say, I’d say it, and if I had nothing to say, I wouldn’t.  If I wanted to be around someone, I would, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t.  It was as simple and uncomplicated as that until others started leaving marks on my life by their opinions of how I should be, less shy and more smiling. 

During a recent conversation, someone shared with me her feelings about how mismatched her son’s girlfriend was to him.  Making the comparison of how loud and noisy her family is, verses how very quiet her son’s girlfriend is, saying that she couldn’t picture someone so outgoing like her son, fitting with someone so quiet like his girlfriend.       

I shared with her how I’d been labeled shy as a child, telling her that none of us know what is going on inside another person. What my English teacher didn’t see behind my unsmiling face was a little girl whose dad had suffered his first of several heart attacks while I was a little girl in middle school.  She knew nothing of the fear that I held inside that I would lose my dad like I’d lost an aunt to brain cancer.  Seeing my aunt’s sweet nature turn from someone whom I’d never known to swear, to hearing her use the f-bomb often, as she struggled to remember things that the cancer ate from her memories.  My young eyes taking in the pain she suffered as her hair all fell out. It was my first real experience with death, and it left such a mark on me that after my aunt died, I would lay awake at night worrying that my mom and dad would die, but my teacher only saw an unsmiling face, and she magnified my reason to not smile by making light of it. 

I remember a scene from an old movie; the title of that movie, story line and characters I can’t remember, but that one particular scene is so clear to memory that the words enacted have stayed with me throughout time.  Although the words from that scene are not verbatim; their meaning are quite clear and their impact continue in my life.  I remember a man telling the person standing before him, to take a coin and hold it in front of his face, and then asking that person what they saw.  Undecidedly the person answered with the most obvious answer, it was a coin that they saw.  The man then instructed that person to hold the coin out at arm’s length, again posing the question, what do you see?  This time, without the focus being primarily on the coin, the person saw various things throughout the room; a chair, a window and its view beyond.  The point being, when that person’s focus was only on money; money was all that they saw.   

People are more than the exterior that we see; they don’t become who they are without a little help from their environment. 

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

As people, and especially as Christians, if we are continually focusing on the problem instead of the solution, it is only the problem that we will see. Negative focus allows hopelessness and complaining to overtake us, and what kind of Christian do we look like to others if we complain about our situation instead of trusting God with it?  

God is the hope; He is the possible in the impossible situation; He is the solution, so challenge yourself to look for Him because He is everywhere. He’s behind that person who kindly opened the door for you while you were struggling with packages; He’s that kind smile from a stranger passing by when you’ve had a really bad day. God is only unseen when we don’t look for Him, so each day seek Him out, and during those bad times, remind yourself where you saw Him.  Start focusing on the right things, and allow hope to work its way into your situation, and start seeing the possibilities, instead of the impossibilities. After all, if making disciples for Christ is our job as a Christian than complaining certainly won’t look good on our resume.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world (Philippians 2:14-15)

And just a friendly word of advice, don’t focus on what you perceive to be someone else’s flaws, but instead look beyond their unsmiling face, and offer them words of kindness, instead of judgement, and who knows, you just might give them a reason to smile…