Balcony People |
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As I write about our relationships with others, our expectations of our own gifts and abilities, and our perception of these subjects, I have about concluded that there are only two basic types of people in the world: the evaluators and the affirmers. I am sure, if there were a way to view a movie and see instant replays of all the strategic change points in our lives, that we'd instantly spot the people who either broke our spirits by critical or judgmental evaluations, or who healed us by loving, perceptive affirmations. To be honest, I seem to be able to remember the negative comments of evaluators faster and more clearly than the positive remarks of the affirmers. I'm not alone in this ability to recall the negative, as immature as it is, for many of you have verified that you, too, think along those same lines. I suspect that not far from anyone's conscious level of thinking lies the memory of an evaluator who pulled on his or her spiked boots and stomped deliberately over our bare soul and personhood. As I grow older, however, I am learning (slowly) that I have a choice about evaluators - past and present. I can choose to keep them and their judgmental opinions in the past, even if the "past" means just yesterday. A very insightful woman, writing me about the book Irregular People, discovered this same choice about evaluators. She had been irritated by a remark made by a woman in her family, and she wrote, I told myself I would not let it get to me. But I soon found my mind playing her words over and over-imagining myself repeating them to my husband, daughter, and a person with whom I work. The Lord broke into my thoughts with His quiet voice and said, "Those words [from the woman] came to pass - why don't you let them pass?" And I had to agree it was true. If I would just let what she says and does "pass with the doing and saying" and not keep them around by mulling them over in my memory, it would be much easier. We all have the choice to replay the harmful remarks from evaluators, or we can choose to let them pass on. We can even choose to make allowances for their discouraging, destructive words. But best of all is the choice to willingly focus our minds and hearts on today's person who is affirming us. Let me ask you. Who is the affirmer in your life, who by one small sentence or more, has changed and lifted your opinion of yourself? Who was the person early in your life who recognized the first sparks of originality in the labyrinths of your mind and soul, and saw what no one else saw? And who is the special affirmer who catches quick glimpses of the flames from the fires of your potential and tells you so? Who, by his or her words, helps you to respect and believe in your own value as a person? And who is the affirmer who encourages you to stretch and dream beyond your self-imposed limits and capabilities? Whoever these people may be, I know their name, for they are called Affirmers, with a capital A. I have known only a few genuine affirmers, but one affirmer is worth a thousand evaluators. In my childhood my chief and constant affirmer was my mother, Marion Miller. She called me "Joyce honey" even on the days when I was not exactly honey sweet. She was a planter of dream-seeds, and died before she ever saw the harvest of her plantings. My affirmer in the fifth grade was a music teacher named Mrs. Applegate. She told the entire girls' glee club that when I grew up I'd be a famous singer. When I was eleven, my affirmer was the songwriter extraordinaire, Audrey Mieir. She told my mother that when I grew up I'd be a famous pianist. At sixteen, the composer and thoroughly unique Phil Kerr, affirmed me by allowing me to sing at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in his Monday Musicals with the top artists in Christian music. Phil, however, told me that when I grew up, I'd be a famous writer. (By then I didn't care about being a famous anything, I just wanted to grow up.) In my mid twenties, when I had become a wife and mother, there was a whole string of incredible women who became my affirmers. There was Henrietta Mears, Velma Spencer, Dale Evans, Melva Wickman, Gert Behanna and of course, as always, my mother. These women had one thing in common: they were all rich and famous in God. It was as though each one's lifework and occupational priority was solely to affirm others, and in doing so they each gained great wealth of spirit themselves. One of the best things about these affirmers was that they helped me to discover and see myself by a clearer, truer light. They were always able to peel back the layers of pretense I wore like costumes for a bad play. Most of the time they saw through and past the masks I hid behind. Then, once having broken through to me, they'd get on with the business of motivating me to be all that I could be. Because of these women (and later, other affirmers in my life) I've learned much about my true personal identity. I even found I liked some (not all) of the traits in my character. It was my mother who, early on, discovered the insatiable levels of my curiosity, and my fertile imagination. She set herself to teaching me how to see and hear everything that was going on around me. (It was training that I use every day of my life now, as a communicator.) It was also then, while my mother was developing my ability to observe the smallest detail, that I discovered I was deeply attracted to tiny things. To me, less is more. For instance, I love observing with all my senses a dainty, fragile-looking little girl or a three-year-old boy who mimes his dad's actions so much that he looks like a miniature man. I am charmed by a yellow kitten who looks like a small sphere of golden fluff sleeping in the sunlight or a soft brown-eyed puppy who begs to be hugged. I like to listen to a lone musician sing a cappella or play a violin. I appreciate a single pearl, a solitaire diamond, a rosebud, a tiny translucent seashell, a petite blue-purple butterfly. But, most of all, I am particularly pleasured by watching a tiny, spirited bird ... especially a sparrow. When I was thirty years old, knowing my love of music, tiny things, and my gift of imagery, my mother gave me the book entitled Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale. She inscribed the front page with, "To My Little Sparrow, who can sing like a lark." I was thrilled by the story of Jenny Lind, but I was totally enchanted by being called a "little sparrow." Four years later, when my mother died, I leafed through all the Bibles and books she had given me. The chill of her death was somewhat warmed by reading her affirming comments. But none eased my heart quite like the inscription calling me her "little sparrow." She knew I loved tiny things and that my imagination could easily visualize a mother bird lovingly caring for her baby offspring. Her words were always an original and different way of saying "I love you." I have, on a rare occasion or two, spoken about sparrows and my fascination with tiny things, but for the most part of my public life I've kept this facet of my thought processes to myself. So I was more than a little taken aback last year, when a woman I'd met only casually a few times asked, "When are you going to write about the little bird?" Thoroughly stunned, I finally managed to respond, "What bird?" and wondered how she knew. How could she have so accurately read my mind or seen so directly into my soul? She reached over to me, touched my face gently and said quietly but distinctly, "The tiny bird who lives inside you. You know, the one that is so broken it cannot fly or sing anymore." She knew. The woman knew! I thought I'd kept that little broken bird well hidden, but here she was asking me to write about it. My astonishment must have been written on my face because she asked, "Don't you know about small birds?" I shrugged my shoulders. She responded, "Then let me tell you about them." For the next few minutes she gave me a detailed, almost scientific, description of the life and times of a small bird, such as a sparrow. Sparrows, she told me, possess remarkable strength and endurance records. They seem to be impervious to severe winds or inclement weather. They fly continually, all day long, foraging for food. They have been clocked at great speeds and have been known to fly hundreds of miles during one daylight period. Their endurance and energy levels are enormous, and even their wing revolutions per minute present an awesome number. Sparrows are incredibly strong and tough little birds, making them appear virtually indestructible. When my new friend had finished her discourse on the sparrow's amazing strength, she looked at me and continued softly but more intensely, "However, as powerful as sparrows are, if you, as a human being, were to catch a sparrow in your hand and squeeze it, you could break every bone in its body and crush it to death within thirty seconds." She waited while her words formed pictures in my mind, at then, still gently, she said, "You are very much like a sparrow. "You appear powerful, strong, impervious to the storms of life, but I see you are crushed and broken, without a song. And have to ask, who has crushed you?" I couldn't speak. She sat down across from me and almost as if it were to herself she whispered, "You are a strong, powerful lady. Your audiences and readers draw great hope and courage from your life's examples. You are resilient and seem undefeatable, but you hide the fact that you have been broken and that your song is gone. Someone has reached down inside of you and crushed the life out of your heart. When will you write of this? When will you admit the damage and try to sing again?" For days after that encounter, I wept. How well I knew of the little bird lying broken and silent at the bottom of my soul. How familiar I was with the human beings who, by their critical or judgmental evaluations, had crushed my spirit and carried of my song. You and I are absolutely no different. We have all, at one time or another in our lifetime, been crushed by an evaluator or two. Yet, particularly as believers, we are expected to appear victorious. We are expected to be on a continuous spiritual high. We are expected to fly, as the sparrows, undaunted into the storms of life. After all, aren't we God's children? The dilemma forces us to put on our brightest smiles, and we give forth our most ebullient greetings when asked about our well-being. We hide the painful truth from ourselves and other children of God as though a crushed spirit represents a hideous flaw in our character. We deny that someone, even a saint of God, has caught us in their wrenching grip of words and has snuffed out our ability to shine. But mostly we deny that an empty void even exists within us for fear yet another evaluator will come along and condemn us or, worse, try to set us straight. So we retreat behind masks. We feel hypocritical and have nagging feelings of guilt for what we know we are supposed to be, compared with the reality of what we are. But we feel safer behind our masks. An intriguing piece, anonymously written, entitled "Please Hear What I'm Not Saying," bypasses our masks, our denial systems, and goes for the heart of the matter. |
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Don't be fooled by me. My surface may be smooth but my
surface is my mask, But I don't tell you this. So I play my game, my desperate,
pretending game |
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The encounter with her, the story of the fragileness as well as the strength of sparrows, and the truths I faced that day have certainly caused me much soul searching. But I am more convinced than ever that if our inner brokenness is ever to be made whole, and if we are to ever sing again, we will need to deal with the issues of evaluators and affirmers in our lives. I also firmly believe that the need for affirming one another is crucial to our process of becoming real, not phony or hypocritical, people of God. Affirming brings authenticity and credibility to our faith as it is lived day by day. I must be affirmed, and I must be an affirmer to others. Otherwise I miss one of the main concepts of the New Testament - to love one another and to bear one another's burdens.
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