“I’d rather have my hair soft and long on my back,” my six-year-old told me this morning.
I stood over her and braided her hair before school. There are only a few days left in Kindergarten and I’m starting to feel their childhood slip past me.
“Let’s braid it so it doesn’t get in your eyes today, okay sweetheart?” I was nearly finished with the blonde braid, different colors of deep gold and brown peppering the pale.
She paused.
“What if someone tells me it looks stupid?” She was honestly worried about how others would see her.
I finished the braid and held her face. “You know it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I think you are beautiful and you know you are beautiful and that is what matters.”
I imagine that when I pick her up later her braid will have turned into a wavy mess of blonde, not because she was embarrassed but because the braid was in her way or felt too tight.
I guess we start young with allowing the words and opinions of others change the way we live.
I do it.
You do it.
My Kindergartener does it.
Sometimes we should let other people help us and pour into us and give us good solid words of truth. It’s what community is for and what families and groups of friends are for. Hopefully words like this make us better people.
But so often we give too much weight to the opinions of others and we let those words make us worse. We let it steal our confidence and take away our certainty. We let those types of words wound us and make us question what we already know to be right.
Why do we let people who don’t know us,
don’t love us,
or don’t understand us
hold so much weight in our lives?
We let their words rest on our shoulders like bricks in back packs. We give them power when we listen and we give them authority in our lives.
When I do this, I let those words and opinions change me. And it’s not a good change.
It makes me stand with wobbly feet in judgment and fear rather than strong legs and a strong heart firmly planted in a soil of grace and truth.
Let’s make a pact today to listen to the right voices and to weigh carefully the opinions and words of others against a backdrop of what we know to be true.
Let us wear our braids proudly because what we know is true is that we are already beautiful.
Do you let the opinions of others affect you for better and for worse? When have you let someone’s words rattle your confidence?
I hv been guilty of this.. of allowing someone i thought i admired.. to spew hate and judgment into my life.. and it stalled me artistically for months.. I still find it hard to forget her words to me, and this was someone who has supposedly ‘made it’ in the art and papercrafting world… NOW… I see all the stuff and success she is having, and altho part of me is happy for her, the other part of me thinks she is two faced and such a phoney.. because I know the hate and the meanness she exhibited towards me. It changed me. xo
isn’t it weird how we let other people put us in a stalled mode? i do it. and i hate it. trying not to let those “troll” voices hold any weight. =)
That is the perfect word — weird. I get so easily tripped up. I like the thought of the “troll”. That’s a great image and perhaps can help us (it helps me) view the ridiculousness of some of the negative comments that are thrown at us and hurt us. We can just “throw that troll” (symbolically) off the bridge and cross over into truth and freedom.
Last night I was in tears. I was tripped up by some cruelty I had experienced from my brother. It was a bad day. My husband came home and I was crying. I told him, “I’m bad!! I’m just bad.” Then he said the neatest thing, “Your brother told you that you were bad, and I think you are believing it. Do you think God would tell you that you are a bad person? No. In fact, he delights in you. It’s like everything He loves about you he puts up on his fridge.” What?? I didn’t get it. I looked at my husband who had happiness in his eyes. “Remember when our kids were growing up? All the pictures they brought home from school we displayed on the fridge because we loved them?” God does not think I’m bad. Quite the opposite! He loves me like a father, and puts my silly pictures up on His fridge because it’s part of me, part of what’s in my heart, and the Father delights in me. The same goes for all of us!
yes he does. he delights in you!! =)
bonitarose — Jesus is putting your professional artwork on His fridge!! He loves it!
love that!
Oh golly yes!! This is a wonderful post. We need to be reminded that truth that we should listen to is surrounded in love and wraps around us. The harsh negative needs to be let go. We need to look at those people and know that it’s not that they don’t love us, but rather they simply don’t know us. We need to let their negative be their negative and hold onto our positive. No reason for drama or crisis, just let go of the lies and hold on to the truth.
You have to be careful who you confide in and always confide first in God. Let Him help you weigh the options. No one elses opinion really matters. I learned that the hard way before and now am relearning it again. Thanks for the reminder.
It is funny how quickly we give weight to the words and opinions of those who do not love us, see beauty and worth, yet we quickly slip past the amazing truth that the Creator, God, Savior or Man kind really really loves us, delights in us,finds us worth the blood of His Son!
Oh yes. All the time. As much as I don’t want others’ opinions to rule I still allow them to. I just want everybody to be happy with everybody and that’s not how the world operates (surprise, surprise). Words hurt, – from parents, friends, in-laws, the church body…etc. They stick and it’s hard to UN-stick them! Trying to focus on ‘peace’ this year.