You know how kids can say something and make you all gooey inside. A couple of weeks ago Karis (Clayton & Allison's middle daughter) saw me in the hallway at work and just yelled "Tina!". My heart just melted. At that moment in time she could have asked for anything and I would have given it to her. It was such a precious moment.
BUT the opposite can happen as well. Tonight as I was washing my hands in the bathroom at church a little boy and his mother were at the sink next to me. The little boy points to me and turns to his mother and asks, "Why is she so fat?" I am not kidding!! He kept asking again and again. His mother just kept saying "That is not nice." But the little boy persisted. Needless to say, I was in no rush to follow them out of the bathroom. I was quite shook up. My mind went so many directions.
I remembered my last few weeks working so hard in the gym. My rejoicing on Saturday that I had lost 5 pounds... all that joy gone in a second.
I questioned how I see myself. It is true. I often forget that I am overweight. If people who were overweight went around thinking about it all the time, we would be much more depressed than we already are. I know I am overweight, but I don't think about it all the time. Especially not when I am serving at church. When I was in the Philippines people kept making comments about my weight. That added a whole other dimension onto my mission trip.
It made me sad. It mad me mad. It ruined my night, b/c he verbalized the question I have asked myself so many times, "Why am I so fat?"
Sure I can blame the parents. The boy had to hear it somewhere. The little boy should have had better manners. The mother could have apologized to me. But I cannot change any of that. What happened happened. Out of the mouth of babes does come truth. The question is how am I going to let it affect me?
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*hugs* My son talks about having fat legs and thin legs. I have fat legs. He asked me once why, and I told him it was because I eat too much and don't exercise enough. He has learned that it is not polite or loving to comment about someone's legs (or anything else). But it is sobering. I know why I am overweight. This reminds me of something our vicar mentioned at the monthly church prayer meeting on Wednesday night. He said he'd been to a talk that day about evangelism, and the speaker challenged them to wake up every morning and as we opened the first door after we got out of bed to pray and ask God to open doors of opportunity to share the Gospel.
Now, I know that God answers prayer. I knew if I prayed for God to open doors for His Gospel to be spread, that He would! So, I prayed for the courage and humility and joy to actually PRAY for opportunities. I'm a wimp.. but why? Because of my pride in having people think I'm not crazy. I'm too worried about them establishing that knowledge about me that I compromise telling them about Jesus until they have it deeply ingrained that I'm not just a crackpot. It's something I'm working on.
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