don't you listen to those mean people

Isn’t there always someone in your life who makes you feel an inch tall –either by words or by action?  For me it was in P.E.  Every single year of P.E. 

Can’t catch.  Can’t throw.  Can’t hit.  Can’t kick.  Can’t climb the rope or pull myself up on a bar.  Can’t run fast.  Can’t serve a volleyball. 

Nobody ever needed to say mean things to me out loud.  I could see it on their faces when I got up to bat.  I could see it in their eyes as I stood very, very lonely –last one picked for the team every time.   

One special day in P.E. Amy was nice to me.  I think she told me good job or something, and I remember it because it was such an incredibly rare kindness from an athletic person to a...not so athletic person.  But kindness was not the norm. 

Come to find out, I didn’t really need to be able to do all that athletic stuff.  I can swing a wicked pen, and I type 90 words per minute.  Now I type medical reports for a living, and I laugh at all the orthopedic injuries.  Foolish athletic people, I scoff inwardly.  Come to find out, a person doesn’t need rods or plates or screws or crutches or casts or stitches if that person is just really, really amazing at reading books and writing down stuff.  Turns out I’m not as big a loser as they thought I was.  I wish they could see me now –typing really fast about their injuries. 

So here’s a note to my special friend who walks into a place every day where people call names and cut, cut, cut you down.   

They don’t get to decide who you are.   

John 3:16 is all you need.  “God so loved the world.”  God trumps the mean people.  God gets to decide what you’re worth.  “…so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.”  You’re worth –everything. 

And for what it’s worth, I think you’re valuable, too.