a letter

My church women's group's Christmas party was last night. It's mostly "fun" without much "serious" - we have a potluck dinner and do a white-elephant gift exchange (where you never know if the gift you choose will be something nice-but-something-that-particular-person-couldn't-use or something awful - there are a couple of "awful" gifts that make the rounds every year).

But we do have a devotional. I particularly liked the one this year. I do not know if the person who did it wrote it herself or if she found it published somewhere.

It was a letter. She described it as a letter that could have been written on the first Christmas, or any Christmas after that.

It started out, "My dear children."

It went on to say, "There are people in this world who are here to deceive you. They will try to convince you that you are not smart enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, not good enough, that you've broken too many promises, that you've lived too many lies..." through a long litany of things that people use either to beat themselves up or to beat other people up. The letter writer (who it is supposed to be I am sure you have guessed by now) goes on to say, "You do not belong to those people. You belong to me. And I love you, you are precious to me."

The letter writer adds "I have given my all for you, to show you how much I love you."

I have to admit I was fighting tears during part of the letter (okay - in case you didn't guess, the conceit is that it was God writing the letter to humanity). But I do that SO MUCH, telling myself I'm not smart enough or good enough or whatever. I let people's criticism of things I do become evidence to me that I'm NOT good enough (and not that I need to improve that one particular thing, or that that particular event didn't go as planned, or that the person is just lashing out and it's not me, it's them). I let the mistakes I make be proof that I'm not worthy to hold down the job I do, or do the things I do, or whatever.

So it's something I need to hear, and something I find almost surprising, to be reminded of. That although I may screw up, there's still something worthwhile in there.

I find myself thinking of all the crap I've taken over my life - as a kid, I was called "retard" (which still puzzles me). I was told I was ugly, I was told I was stupid and a "spazz" and all kinds of things. And I think people do internalize that stuff, especially as kids. (I still think I'm kind of a spazz but I also think there are some silly/positive connotations to that - you can be a spazz because you're really enthusiastic about something, for example)

(And yes, I know, "spazz" used to be a very horrible insult to people with certain types of motor defects. By the time I was on the scene, it was pretty much used as a synonym for "nerd" or "geek")

And as a teenager, I believed myself - for some reason - to be hideously ugly. (I'm still surprised and taken aback when someone comments positively about my appearance. I was in a wool shop over Thanksgiving break with my mother and while I was looking around, I overheard the owner say to my mother, "she's a pretty woman." Which surprises me, a little).

As an adult, I was essentially kicked out of the first grad school I attended (because I didn't have a good enough research plan). I was criticized roundly and (I think) unfairly by a supervisor my first semester of being a teaching assistant when I went back to grad school. I get nasty comments on evaluations from time to time. And every one of those things is like a little coal burning in my heart - it hurts, and I have no good way to put out that hurt. I tend to dwell on it and when I'm lying awake in bed at night I return to those criticisms and use them as evidence - almost like I am on trial - of why I'm no good.

I wonder if anyone really believes themselves to be "good enough" or if everyone is carrying around some sense that they're messed up - either generally messed up or messed up in some very specific way.

And yet, my faith teaches me that despite my perception of messed-up-ness, there's still something valuable there...there's something worthwhile.

I once read an essay that surmised that our lives are kind of like a tapestry we weave. And because we're human, mistakes get woven into that tapestry. But at the end of our lives, the writer suggested, when we see God, God takes that tapestry and either fixes the mistakes - so it's complete and whole and we can see what it was meant to be - or else somehow transforms the mistakes so the tapestry is whole. And you know, that's something I kind of hold on to. Something I kind of hope for - that the things I screwed up in this life will either be undone (so they don't matter any more) or will be changed so that although it may have been a mistake at the time, it comes to be an integral and good part of the whole.

I don't know. But it's funny, in such a self-esteem obsessed world that at least some of us seem to be walking around a lot of the time feeling like we're not good enough.

(And I do see a difference between accepting yourself as a child of God - and therefore valuable to God despite everything you know about yourself - and having a sort of false self-esteem, where people tell you that everything you do is perfect and wonderful. I'm just not very good at articulating what that difference is...perhaps it's the difference between flawed-but-still-valuable and I-don't-believe-I-have-any-flaws).