THE PERSONALITY STORE
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all hop in our cars and drive down to the local PERSONALITY store? We could walk down the isles filling our squeaky carts with boxes of “Easy Going,” cans of “Integrity,” bottles of “Strength,” and gallon jugs of “Pride.” The fifty pound bags of “Self Esteem” would be so huge, we’d have to heft ours onto the cart’s bottom shelf. Imagine being able to stand at the salad bar mixing together into a carry out carton just the right blend of talent, intelligence, intrigue, and beauty; and then ladling on a nice thick coating of happiness. Then, of course, it wouldn’t be complete without sprinkles of fun and giggles on the top.
Unlike a lot of women, most of the time I hate shopping. I don’t like filling my cart with food knowing that it’s just going to make my body fatter and my wallet thinner. I don’t like walking around for hours looking for some new dress, perfume, book, or handbag that is going to be given the hopeless task of making me like myself better. It’s ultimately “hopeless” because, after only a few days, the “new” will be gone; and I’ll be left alone with “me” again. Now if I could find a PERSONALITY store, I think I could spend days in there comparing prices and flipping through the racks. I’d make several trips to my car balancing boxes and dragging bags behind me.
Don’t get me wrong. Except for the weight thing, I like myself pretty well…now; but I didn’t get to this point by doing something as easy as preparing a budget, making a list, and stopping by the store on the way home. I, certainly, wasn’t born with my self-esteem any more than I came into this world dragging behind me a JC Penney bag. I got to this point the same way most everyone else does—the hard way.
It doesn’t seem to be hard for everybody, though. As I grew, I saw children, adolescents, teenagers, and now adults who embrace themselves much more than I always felt that I could myself; so what was the difference with those people? Were they born wealthy? Were their parents important people of some sort? Did their family, friends, and teachers shower them with constant praise? What?
The fact is, for whatever reason, happiness and self-esteem DOES come easier for some people; but that doesn’t mean that it is not available to everyone else. I could run down through my life story listing all the scrapes and bruises to my ego as well as the encouragements and advice I received throughout the years; but that would take better than 200 typed pages. I know this because I’m currently working on my autobiography, and that’s how many typed pages I have about myself so far. I’ll NOT bore you here with specifics. What’s important here is that, in going over the years of my life remembering things that make me laugh and things that make me cry, I realize that almost all of it was, specifically, important to bring me to the person that I am now.
There were people who hurt me; just as there were people who I hurt—whether I intended to or not. There were misunderstandings; there were fears that kept me from trying things; there were horrifying embarrassments that still sting a bit; and most of all, there were heartaches. But there were also lessons learned; there was self analysis; there were apologies and forgiveness; and there was emotional and spiritual growth.
Believe me, I understand liking THINGS about yourself but also feeling—by and large—like you MUST be inferior because people don’t seem to “get you.” The world doesn’t seem to be opening up and embracing you. Things are just not going, for you, the way they should for someone who is "special" or "valuable." It causes you to question yourself constantly.
Here’s something that it took me forty three years of life and typing one autobiography to learn. I was always missing the point of “self-esteem.” It’s “SELF” esteem. I placed my esteem on whether I got impressive feedback from other people. Did the cute popular boys pay attention to me? Did my girlfriends call ME and ask ME to do things, or was it always me trying to tag along with THEM? Did my school teachers and Sunday school leaders praise me enough? Did my friends laugh at my jokes? Even in recent years…do the young people seem to care about MY opinion, or do they roll their eyes when I start talking? Do people think my artwork is good enough that they will actually pay money for it? Will people care when they read my autobiography or will they judge me for wanting to talk about myself…as usual?
The point of self esteem is how I feel about MYSELF. And not only that. It has to involve GOD—the one who gave me myself. I don’t believe that GOD involves himself so heavily in everyone’s lives that every scrape, bruise, achievement, or passing score can be attributed to him. I believe that he gave us OURSELVES and he gives us the freedom to make choices. It is those choices that affect our lives. It’s not even just OUR own choices that affect our lives. It’s the nature of living in a world that doesn’t have God’s constant hand making everything work out perfectly for everyone. So if someone gets hit by a car, it’s not because that person told a lie once or used to be a bully in school. It’s because that person lives in an imperfect world.
I do believe, however—and have always believed—that God sees everything that goes on. I believe that he allows some things to happen to his children—even though they are hurtful things—because those very things are what will help that person grow and have a deeper appreciation for themselves, others, and God. I believe that God withholds blessings from his children who selfishly ignore his will in favor of their own. I believe that God DOES involve himself, sometimes, in the lives of people who truly call on him with broken hearts. I believe all of these things—not only because I’ve read about them in the Bible—but because I have experienced them, personally. I came through the low self-esteem, the embarrassments, the unfulfilled dreams, and the heartaches just as I, also, came through my own temper, judgment of others, and stubborn pride.
For true self-esteem, we have to let go of ALL of it and get back to just God and SELF. We have to be able to lay our heads on our pillows each night knowing that we should only be disappointed in ourselves if we’ve done something to disappoint God. We need to ask for God’s forgiveness and be willing to accept his daily guiding hand. Then, we have to relax. Daily things that we believe are such huge deals, really aren’t—in the scheme of things. I know from experience that in twenty years, if we’ve allowed ourselves to grow and learn from our mistakes, we will be able to look back on them—not with sadness and regret—but with understanding and even an appreciation for how they made us the person that we are.
Life experiences ARE our PERSONALITY Store. We CAN pick up big bottles of “Self encouragement,” small boxes of “Acceptance,” and jars of “Try and Try Again.” We can fill our carts with “Kindness,” Compassion,” and “Selflessness;” and if we slow down enough, we can even find a bag or two of “Fulfillment” scattered throughout. Above all, we should neither resent this PERSONALITY store nor take it for granted. We shouldn’t run, clumsily, through, leaning on rusting, squeaking carts with dragging wheels. We shouldn’t stick our arms in and rake “Fun,” “Personal enjoyment” and “Selfish desires” into our carts while we let perfectly good boxes of “Self-respect” and “Dignity” go crashing to the floor. We should take our time, consider our options, and compare prices; because none of us leaves the store without stopping at the checkout counter and receiving our final bill.
“No, not one.”
WE ARE ALWAYS TEACHING
My morning alarm is set to a radio station; so that each morning, I am not jarred awake by an irritating bleating noise. Some mornings, at the precise time the alarm music comes on, it is at the loud climactic high note by some country singer or I’ve forgotten to turn down the volume from when I was listening to a book on tape the previous day. If I am really in for a rude awakening, it’s both. Most times, though, I am gently lured from sleep by the morning weather or—since it is my hometown radio station—by death announcements, police reports, or hog prices. A couple of years ago, for several mornings in a row, I heard a radio advertisement by the violence prevention campaign called Adults and Children Together against Violence.
The commercials went something like this: Gentle music is playing while kind-sounding parents give their children helpful hints such as “lefty-loosy, righty-tighty” or “put one bunny ear around the other, and then your shoe’s tied” or “See? yellow and blue make green.” You can even hear what sounds like the mother drawing with a crayon.
Suddenly, the sound changes to blaring horns, and the father shouts “Where’d you learn how to drive, you moron!” or in another commercial “What’s the matter, ump? You blind or something?” In another commercial, the parent is yelling directly at the kid and calling him or her a name for having done something wrong. The commercials all end with the voiceover, “Remember, you’re always teaching--teach carefully.”
I don’t know how well this commercial got through to thoughtless parents, but it struck home with me in another way. My husband has a favorite quote that, believe me, I hear over and over again. “People will treat you the way you teach them to treat you.” Usually when he’s saying that to me I’m already in a bad mood so I am not very appreciative; but it’s actually very true. Something else is true. “People will treat God the way we teach them to treat God” and just like the commercial says. “We ARE always teaching.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I realize, with sadness, that I taught a lot of people a lot of things that I, now, wish I could unteach. When I was in elementary school, I taught my fellow students that the only reason that I didn’t dance or wear pants was that my church taught against it; but I couldn’t really explain why. In Junior High, I taught a fellow student that when actually put on the spot, I didn’t really know what being “saved” meant? When I brought a friend or young cousin to church, I taught her that it was okay to giggle or pass notes back and forth and, in general, not pay attention at all.
I can remember some good things that I taught, once I was more mature and really did accept Christ as my personal savior; but, sadly, I still taught some bad things. I taught a few young people that were falling away from the church’s teachings that a fellow Christian can feel the stubborn need to “teach them a thing or two” when well-placed words of wisdom would, probably, have been more productive. I taught a young, already nervous mother that, yes, people WERE watching and judging her by how she let her children behave in church. I even taught, by my actions, that as long as what I was doing was not ACTUALLY evil, I didn’t care what it looked like. Some proud person might ask, “What’s wrong with that?” But God says that we should abstain from even the APPEARANCE of evil because of the affect that the “appearance” will have on others.
When I was a young adult, I still hung around with some of the younger teenage girls. Since I had the car and was older, I was the leader. I was never encouraged by the young girls to take them to a bar or to take them cruising for boys. That wouldn’t have worked on me anyway, because I would not have stood for that. But because I had started enjoying movies in the theater, I looked for the good and disregarded any of the bad points that I had always been taught about that particular type of entertainment. When I made that departure from our church’s teachings, lightning didn’t strike me; so—little by little—I became comfortable with it. One day, while out with one of the young girls from my church, we went to a movie; and we had a good time. I was all ready with my arguments if my know-it-all older sister tried to make me feel guilty. The problem was, she made the one argument that I was not ready for. I was an adult, she pointed out, and I was taking someone who was not an adult somewhere that her parents did not approve of.
I taught that young lady that it was okay to disobey her parents and go against the teachings of our church as long as she “didn’t see anything wrong with it” herself. I tried never again to teach that lesson to a minor with regard to his/her parents, but I’m afraid that with my actions in following years, I still taught it to young people with regard to our church. I taught them that if they didn’t feel like coming to church dinners and fellowshipping with God’s family, that was okay. I taught them that if they thought that the monthly rest home services were pointless and they didn’t want to participate, that was okay. I taught them that if they didn’t particularly feel like Sunday School, Wednesday night services, Vacation Bible School, or the monthly ladies fellowship meetings were important, they could just not come to them either. Eventually, I even taught them that when they felt like they were done with our church altogether, they could just leave. I didn’t teach these things by actually saying them out loud to the young people who went to our church or to the lost people who knew that I was a member here. I taught these things by my actions.
We each of us, every day, are teaching. We’re teaching the young people who look up to us because we act young and take an interest in them. By not being an appropriate spiritual leader to these young people, we are teaching them that spiritual things are not all that important or that it is okay to interpret them in our own ways.
We teach our co-workers who see us dressing or talking inappropriately or who simply never see anything spiritually different in us. We’re teaching them that God is not really that large a part of our lives.
We teach our friends who see us skipping a church event to be with them; who see us dancing or watching R-rated movies; who, even worse, maybe even see us drinking or playing with fire with someone of the opposite sex. We are teaching those friends that God’s teachings are for inside the church building only and are not to be taken too seriously when we step back outside.
The Bible says in Matthew 18:6 “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” We’ve heard the verse before, but really think about it. We’re saved and that’s wonderful, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t answer for the way that we have taught people to treat God.
Even when we think no one knows that we profess to be a Christian; so buying that alcoholic drink or wearing immodest clothing when we’re on vacation will not really make a difference, it makes a difference. The Bible says in Matthew 12:30 “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” So even though the people don’t know us, we have given them one more encouragement that they are not alone in their disregard for the teachings of God.
I have no way of knowing how many people over the years were affected by my bad decisions. I don’t know if some of them later left my church, in part, because of something “hollier than thou” that I said. I don’t know if maybe some of them respected me and felt that if I could walk away, so could they. I do know that none of us can go back and completely unteach the way that we have taught others to treat God. What’s done is done. But from this time, forward, let’s all try to remember. We are ALWAYS teaching; so let’s teach carefully.
