You Would Be Nothing

​I was in the fourth grade when the mother of one of my classmates, there to pick her daughter up early, caught me by the elbow on the playground, whisked me aside and hissed into my ear, “You would be nothing without that hair.”

​At nine I knew I didn’t fully understand the interaction. 

But I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone to try to gain clarity. 

My mom and I were no longer one-- I was far too old for that. As I chose my own clothes and had thoughts concerning boys I felt I could never tell her about, we were as separate as stars in the sky. Not understanding the beauty of constellations, I kept my distance and kept this secret.
 
Plainly, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed because this interaction made clear, in case I wasn’t already sure (I had been suspecting) that I was hateable. So hateable, in fact, that a grown woman who didn’t even know me felt compelled to singe my ear with her sentiments. I couldn’t be positive, but I was almost certain her behavior was outside the scope of respectable adulting and she was apparently willing to risk her status to relay this message. Hating a child was risky. Telling them about it was down right forbidden. What could this breach possibly say about me? Precisely how worthy of this misconduct was I? It had to be bad.

The other indicator that I was downright deplorable was that I detected enjoyment in her cannonball. She enjoyed dropping it. There was a flicker of heat in her tone, that flicker of heat that hatred gives, and her delight increased my shame. 

I wasn’t reflective enough to look beneath her sentence at the time. I wasn’t articulate enough to analyze her words. I wasn’t mature enough to detect her brokenness. When I was reflective enough, articulate enough, mature enough I had long since buried the memory, and it wasn’t until I wanted to experiment with a very short hair cut in my late twenties and worried that I would no longer be considered pretty that the memory came rushing back as I sat staring at myself in my stylist’s chair-- wet, wavering, and weakened, my shame unearthing itself one snip at a time. 

My elementary school’s playground was my Garden of Eden and if the serpent’s hissed question led to humanity’s fall, this woman’s venomous declaration led to my personal one.

​I never wondered before she slinked into my garden if God was providing for me well enough, but that day as I watched her cup her hand on her little girl’s shoulder and lead her through the glass doors talking with her casually like nothing had happened, I felt a sudden need for alertness. I stood owl-eyed, stock still and examined every other girl on the playground that day. What were they doing so right? What was I doing so wrong? Why did no other little girl fall under this woman’s wrath? Why was my elbow the only one she snatched? What did she say again? And what did that mean? I would be nothing? Without what? My hair? Was she saying I wouldn’t be pretty? Was she saying that was everything? Being pretty? Everything? Was she right? Maybe she was. She felt strongly about it, apparently. 

Maybe the world was going to have its way with me soon enough and these questions were due. Maybe it was time. Maybe my fall would have happened anyway, but that day, for the very first time, I started looking side to side to find my answers.

In dog training there is a concept called jackpotting and it means exactly what you think it would mean-- a surprisingly big reinforcer (say one dozen hot dog pieces instead of the expected two) delivered in association to something else (sitting on command). To reinforce a particular behavior, a jackpot appears contingently solidifying the partnership of response and reward. The intensity of the training experience cements the association and forever links one thing to another.

It’s just a guess, but due to the intensity of that playground experience, shame was connected to how I looked. I could feel that rumbling somewhere beneath the surface, too close to ignore but too far away to name. I had felt shame about how I looked for almost as long as I could remember, but I could never identify exactly why. I sat in my stylist’s chair and cried tears of recognition that day, the tears that let me know that this explanation was the right one-- involuntary, hot, tender tears. My stylist panicked thinking I hated my hair. I explained that I just figured out why I hated myself.

Before the You Would Be Nothing Incident of 1986, I had never wondered before if I was pretty or not. My parents told me I was and I believed them. Life was simple. I had everything I needed. The day innocence was lost and knowledge of good and evil was gained, with make up as my fig leaf, I began to rely on the world to tell me about myself. Because I’m too close to this story, inside of it really, I can’t know exactly how my garden’s intruder shaped me, I only know that I was jackpotted, and my heavy emotion linked beauty and shame so that they were one in the same. When I imagine something like this happening to my daughters it makes me want to simultaneously pray for that sad woman on my knees and then punch her in the throat. It hardens a soft spot of compassion into anger until it is so intense that I shake with it.

The other day my friend said this sentence, “I feel like the jury has always been out on if I’m pretty or not,” and something pierced my soul when she said it. I knew that was true for me too. Does every woman feel this way? 

Pretty. 

It’s an uncomfortable topic for me. Is it for everyone? I can’t be sure because I feel like we only talk about it in all the wrong ways. And it’s never honestly.

As an experiment I tactlessly asked those women closest to me if they thought they were pretty. They squirmed and shifted and rambled and eventually came up with a few features they appreciated and then quickly changed the subject. It was a yes or no question. And these women and I have held each other’s sick babies and celebrated each other’s accomplishments and prayed each other’s prayers and recovered from arguments and lifted each other up when we’ve broken down, and yet how we look is somehow off limits. I think it would be valuable to know why. Why can we shamelessly tell the truth in every other area of our lives? What are the emotions we dodge as we bob and weave around a simple question?

It’s probably rare to be able to go back with pinpoint-precision and exactly identify the day I discovered comparing myself to others was the only way to successfully survive, that beauty was something terribly complicated and woefully important, and that other’s opinions of me affected my very own. Most people probably withstood a slow boil. As I’ve grown older and more comfortable with how God made me, standing out has become easier, and physical beauty has certainly become less important, but what I cannot seem to undo no matter how hard I try is unlink my Pavlovian response, the response that links what others think about me to what I think about myself. That’s the real damage of that day. I simply cannot quit looking outside myself to determine my worth. 

And breaking the habitude feels a little booby trapped because technically I’m designed to do it. 

God made me in His image and I was made to do two things. I was made to worship and serve God, and I was made to rule over created things in His name and for His glory. Worship God, rule over creation. But the order got reversed and I worship creation instead. Rebellion and independence flip flopped God’s intention and I worship and serve creation instead of the Creator. And I am ruled by whatever it is I worship.

Yes, I am to look outside myself to learn who I am, but it is the Creator, I am to look to. Not creation.

When Eve entertained the serpent’s question, she probably didn’t have any intention of disobeying. And when she saw the apple, she probably didn’t intend to take it. And when she took it, she probably didn’t intend to taste it. But that’s exactly how that doleful tale ended, mattering much. 

When I entertained that scarring woman’s words, I didn’t have any intention of comparing myself to other people. And as I looked side to side I didn’t have any intention of redefining myself based on what I found. And when I tried to conform, I didn’t have any intention of letting the world tell me what is beautiful. But that is exactly how that doleful tale ended, mattering much. 

The world is wonderfully expert at leading me to doubt my Creator and hate myself. And I am unbearably slow at remembering my value. 

Finding my beauty in God has been a lesson I have had to learn over and over again. It has never been over once it was over. I have had to turn it around and learn it again, each time from a new angle while the Lord peels back another layer to show me something new.
 
This latest discovery was a new take on an old verse. I have spent ample time on Matthew 23:26 where Jesus rebukes the fancy Pharisees and instructs them to clean the inside of the cup and then the outside will be clean also. I’ve applied its teaching as motivation for deeper holiness-- allowing God to the inner dark corners of our hearts so that cleaning them might result in holier behaviors. We tend to work backwards, thinking our holy behaviors can heal our dirty hearts. But recently I saw something different. 

Instead of holiness, the clean cup taught me about worthiness. The outside of my cup simply does not determine my worthiness. My appearance or what others think about me does nothing for my conversion. It is just another backwards approach to wholeness. My worthiness is determined by my God and it is because I am already worthy that I am beautiful. Tending to the inside of my cup is my responsibility. When I recognize who I am in Christ there is no one who can be against me. No one. The outside will be clean also. I clean the outside of my cup first when I look side to side. I clean the inside first when I recognize who I am in Him.

As I have been kicked around a bit I have found that the message of my wounds is nearly always, this is because of you and this is what you deserve.

But the truth is that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, a crown of creation, an image bearer, a life giver, holy and blameless, uniquely gifted, divinely inspired, fully known, and wholly loved-- I am worthy. 

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder as I’ve been told. Beauty is in the discernment of the Creator. And recognizing myself as His prized creation which He has called good allows me to  elevate the internal so that it shows through to the external proving me nothing other than beautiful. The world, my flesh, and sneaky split-tongued serpents will never quit trying to keep me from my desire of true beauty, but with Christ’s power I loosen painful associations, break crippling chains, and bring hidden perceptions into the light so that I finally stop living for the world. And when I stop living for the world, I can no longer die by it. 

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2 NKJV).