A Soft Place to Land
People aren’t meant to have hard edges – pointed, sharp, jagged – like shards of glass we avoid for fear of being cut. A friend of mine told me this years ago, and it has always stuck with me, we aren’t meant to have hard edges. She was speaking of our physique, that it is okay to be a little squishy, instead of pointy like those Hollywood goddesses.
I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot this week. Someone cut me (not with a knife), but with words. Somehow it cuts the same. Maybe deeper, sharper.
Instead of going to the E.R. to stitch it up and medicate, I have to wrestle with it from within – alone. I rehash it over and over in my head, and I always come out on the bottom. The butt of the joke. The clown at the circus. The mime boxed in. No matter how many times I rework it, I recall it the same. I make an effort to affirm, to compliment but am met with belittlement and judgment.
But what I really can’t reconcile is why it upset me so much. Why it lingered in my head so long. Why it was burrowing in so deeply in an effort to create a bitter root. Why couldn’t I let the harshness of someone else’s words simply roll off my shoulders? Why was this minor offense sticking to me like a thick mud, impossible to wash off? I’ve rationalized that it really comes down to two things:
- Expectation
&
- Doubt
For as long as I can remember, I’ve never quite fit the mold of what was expected of me. You know-square peg, round hole. My self-doubts grew like a seed deeply planted, like those burrs that gets stuck in my pets fur becoming egregiously entangled. My doubts evidence themselves in constant questioning about why God made me the way he did.
I’ve often felt like I don’t fit in a room, a box, at the table. As a child, I had tantrums so fierce that my eyes went black, and my face turned red as I screamed, cried, and bellowed for a rescuer to come. I always felt like a foreigner in my own body. Adults looming over and around me pointing, laughing, amused at my grief, a call to justice thick in my soul began to make its way into my heart. Is this how we treat one another? I simply couldn’t understand why a small child didn’t have an advocate, and even worse, that those she loved seemed to be acting as enemies.
Still to this day when a supposed sheep of the Shepherd comes at me like a wolf, I am left reeling. I realize we are all guilty of our fallen humanity. The very things that happen to me, I am likely to do to another. It’s the aftermath of events like this that I can’t seem to palate. There is ne’er an apology, an aim at reconcilement. Instead, I’m to brush it under the rug because us Christians are called to holy living, right? I’m supposed to turn the other cheek, to be slapped again because the Bible tells me so (Matthew 5:38-40)? So, what of the other? While I turn the other cheek, are they reloading their sharp, jagged weapon to aim pointedly my way?
Despite all of the years and scenarios that have attempted to hem me in to what’s expected, I am continually reminded that I am here to please one.
Since those days of toddler tantrums, I’ve wrestled to find a place that embraces me simply as I am. Fortunately, there is always a lap I can sit on, a knee I can climb upon. A holy God that will cup my face and remind me His love covers me, accepts me, delights in me. He reminds me that my identity and purpose doesn’t lie in another’s perception or expectation of me, but rather that I am uniquely and wonderfully made by a holy God, designed with a purpose.
As you wrestle with your own jagged-edged people today and cuts that land deep, know that you are seen, you are heard, you are known, and you are loved by a holy God that was and is for you a gentle and lowly servant. A soft place to land. Isn’t that a trait we could all benefit from? A trait worth mirroring as Jesus followers?
“Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees a wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-”
John 10:11-14, NIV