Punchinello and the giants

(* Warning: This is one of those "unsafe" posts and is VERY long....... I actually wrote it over a week ago but my first draft was a bit too graphic. :oP I even had a photo-shopped pic of myself with my "tattoos". Total overkill but very therapeutic! *rolling eyes*)

Have you ever read the stories/watched the movies about the Wemmicks by Max Lucado? Wemmicks are little wooden people created by Eli, each one is unique and special. Now, as you can probably guess, these stories are allegories teaching little lessons to kids. Anyhow, in the first story, we find that the Wemmicks have a system to rate each other. Now if you are a "good" wemmick and the others like you they bestow on you golden star stickers, and if you are not as good you get black/grey dot stickers. We meet Punchinello who is a very nice little wemmick but he is rather clumsy. No matter how hard he tries to please the other wemmicks and earn a star something goes wrong and he ends up getting another dot. The poor guy is covered in dots and doesn't have even one star..........As you can imagine he is pretty disheartened when all his efforts gain him nothing, in fact sometimes people give him dots just because he is who he is and already has so many! One day he sees a beautiful wemmick walk by named Lucia and she has no stars or dots!!! Someone tries to give her a star because she is so lovely but it falls off........ Punchinello follows her to find out her secret and learns that her dots don't stick because she spends time with Eli. The more time she spends with Eli the less she cares about stars and dots (what all the other wemmicks are obsessed with) and the less they they stick. All she cares about is what Eli says and he adores her. It takes Punchinello some time but he eventually starts spending time with Eli and his dots start disappearing......(I am really shortening the story here but I am sure you can find a copy of the book or movie if you want to find out what you are missing! :o)

All this to say that lately I have felt like punchinello, only instead of plain dots mine are tattooed with names/labels.... I have always struggled with this. From the time I was little I seemed to hold tight to every negative thing that was ever said about me, they were like badges that I couldn't get rid of. It's not as if I wasn't ever given "stars", I actually received lots of compliments. It's just that they didn't stick........ I usually couldn't even remember them. Well, God has used my husband to help me slowly get over this tendency. It's not as if my dots fell off but more that they slowly faded. I quit seeing myself as defined by all these negative things and was slowly shifting my focus off of me and onto God. But now I feel like I fell asleep in a tattoo parlor and am now, once again covered in tattoos...... Those labels that had not quite faded are now as dark as ever and I have new ones...... In fact, I feel like my badges are the names of giants that surround me. Each giant has a name and, in case you happen to squeeze past the giant without noticing him, his name is tattooed on my dots. When the tattoos fade the giants shrink, sometimes disappearing altogether...... They inhibit me from developing friendships. They have a variety of names...... "Not good enough", "Bad Friend", "Harsh", "Judgmental", "Ruthless", "Self-absorbed", "Immature", "Ignorant", etc...... Some that were given by implication, some that were given outright, but the new ones were all given by someone I considered a close friend. I think that's why they are all so dark and ugly. I reached out, with love and the purest motives, to try and help a friend and received in return a formidable pack of giants and dark, ugly labels. When the new ones came they brought back some of my most recently departed giants and caused my shrinking ones to have growth spurts. I find myself withdrawing from everyone....... I mean seriously, who would want to be friends with someone who walks around with her credentials tattooed on her face and is surrounded by giants........ Um, yeah. No one.........

I will say that, though I am in the beginning stages, God is teaching me through this. He is teaching me to look past the giants and to keep my eyes on Him. He is re-establishing with me the importance of rejecting the current fads that focus on self-esteem, self-worth, and feelings and focus on Christ-esteem and Christ-worth. He is teaching me that, though my beliefs may not be what is popular and at times I feel very alone in them, I am not alone. I need to hold fast to the truth despite what is popular in this "enlightened" age. Growth is often painful and this time in my life is no exception but He will prevail.

He alone is good!