This post is a hard one to write, mainly because it deals with my self perception. I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time now. It was a post I never thought I would actually write and, if I did, I would be out on the mission field instead of at home.
God has a way of changing those things. He told me a long time ago (even before the trip) that this post was something that I needed to do. I was resistant. I argued with Him for a long time. I thought my stubbornness could outlast God’s. I thought I could ignore Him in this particular area of my life. But God can be very persistent when He wants to be. Did I say persistent? More like annoying. In the past month, I couldn’t turn on my iPod, open a book, go to church, or even attend a family gathering without Him deciding to remind me.
And now I’ve finally surrendered. And it feels pretty darn good. Don’t get me wrong, this post has been really hard to write. I’ve lost a lot of sleep over it. I’ve started writing it a bazillion times only to believe that it’s not worth writing. That nobody needs to hear about it.
Why? Because this post makes me feel incredibly exposed. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it deals with some scars that I never wanted anybody to see. I’m scared about how people’s perception of me will change. I like looking like I’m a strong, young woman who’s got it all together. I like looking like nothing can phase me. I like relying on just me.
And that’s why this is hard. I had convinced myself that I didn’t need anyone to know. In fact, this post is a story of something that only a couple of people in my life have heard about. One was for someone who needed to know that they weren’t alone. Another was for my World Race interviewer for this trip. Nobody really close to me knows. Not my family. Not even my best friend.
But enough of me rambling. I think I’ve avoided actually telling you the story for long enough.
I was maybe about 9 or 10. Happy, confident, and relatively carefree.
In school, there was a notebook that one of the boys in my class had. He wrote in it and passed it to a lot of the other kids in the class. They would read it and laugh.
I never got to see it, but I really wanted to know what was written in it. I kept on wishing that the notebook would be passed to me. It never was.
One day, I was in the classroom alone. The rest of my class had gone to mass (I went to a Catholic school). I wasn’t Catholic and, instead of going to mass, I went to an alternative Bible study. My class had left early that day and I had some time to kill before I needed to leave. I realized that this was my chance to take a peak inside the notebook. Normally I would never poke through other people’s things, but my curiosity was too strong. I wish I hadn’t looked. But I did.
I remember being excited to finally learn what was so funny.
Instead I learned why the notebook was never passed to me.
Inside was a whole page of expletives which my naive child’s mind didn’t understand. I only saw my name connected with a bunch of them. I glossed over them, not really understanding how it was funny. I thought I was maybe missing something. Then I got to the part that I did understand.
“Neala is ugly.”
The notebook went on to detail the areas I was ugly, but my eyes kept coming back to that one sentence. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the desk staring at that little sentence, until it blurred out of focus from my tears. Then I shut the notebook and put it carefully away; I was afraid that my tears might fall on it, smudge the writing, and reveal that I had looked at it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how the notebook had been passed around and how people had laughed at it. I walked over to the mirror that was in the classroom and, through my tears, stared at myself. Where before I had seen a normal, average girl I saw ugliness.
It would be a long time before I could see anything else in the mirror.
After a time, I realized I needed to get to my Bible study. I went to the bathroom, dried my eyes and splashed my face with water. When I was satisfied that I didn’t look like I had been crying, I left. I pretended like everything was normal. But I felt so empty and worthless. I put on a strong face, but I was crumbling on the inside.
And I told no one. I didn’t tell my parents because I reasoned that any parent would think their kid was pretty. I began to believe that anyone who said I was beautiful just felt sorry for me and didn’t actually mean it. I began not to care about my appearance. I had hardly any self confidence. I felt alone. And I buried everything deep inside where no one, not even me, could see my hurt.
Ever so slowly, I let God begin to heal me. Although I didn’t tell anyone, He sent me people who would show me who I really was. One of them was Emily. She doesn’t even know how much she helped me. Both of us struggled with our self image. We saw that in each other and we encouraged each other. We told each other that we were pretty, that we were beautiful, and that we were worth something. I couldn’t see how Emily couldn’t see it in herself. After a long time, I realized that’s how I was too. I began to believe other people when they told me that I was pretty. I began to see it in the mirror.
It’s not like I don’t still struggle with it, because I do. But I have also found a stronger sense of who I am through it. I feel the freedom to express myself in my own way. To be cliche, I dance to the beat of my own drum. Unless someone is close to me, I don’t tend to care too much what other people think. I’ve found that what other people think of me isn’t what makes me me. I am ultimately what God has made me. And He has made me beautiful. However hard that can be sometimes for me to digest, He has made that truth abundantly clear to me.
….
“I know You share my pain.
I know in You I’ll gain more than this world can ever offer.
I know you hear me calling.
You’re the moon, I’m the wolf and I’m calling.”
….
“So if you’re weary, there is rest. There is rest.
And if you are broken, you can be made whole again.
And if you’re hurting, there is HOPE that will never fail.
If you are lost you can be found.”
