Former Co-Pastor Sylvia Peterson
My friend Terry recently reminded me of this story: A greatly loved rabbi died.
He had been revered by his congregation and there was great concern that a successor would be hard to find. After much prayer and deliberation, it was decided that his son, also a rabbi, would take the father’s place. People were pleased. Surely the son would be “just like the father.”
But after time, the congregation began to grumble and complain. The son certainly gave his heart and soul to the running of the synagogue, but he gradually began making changes that displeased some of the people.
“You are not at all like your father,” they told him with grave disappointment.
“Oh, but I am,” he replied. “My father was one of a kind. He imitated no one, and neither do I.”
Each of us is one of a kind. There will never be another even a little like me, or like you. But the world doesn’t always appreciate uniqueness. Advertisers tell me that there is a physical standard and I’m not using the right beauty products to measure up. My eyebrows are too light, my lips are too thin and my body is too round.
The world would have me believe that I am woefully inadequate, so far from beautiful that I cannot possibly hope to ever be happy.
Terry also told me a story about visiting a friend’s house in Paso Robles. Hanging on the wall was a remarkable piece of art: a pink, purple, and lavender dragon. His host explained, “My daughter did that drawing when she was very young. Her teacher was not pleased and told her that she did it all wrong. Everyone knows that dragons are not pink, purple and lavender.”
The little girl’s parents hung it proudly on the wall to remind her to be “one of a kind.”
At what age do we begin to fit children into a mold that says dragons have “right and wrong” colors? Or that they must grow up to someday have strong eyebrows and slender waists?
God has given each one of us a beautiful gift: self. Who we are is more important than how we make money. How well we love matters more than how we appear.
Author, educator, and activist Parker Palmer wrote, “It is a strange gift, this birthright gift of self. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach, but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, fulfilling the original selfhood given me at birth by God.”
What would our lives look like if we fully and lovingly embraced the humanity God has entrusted to us and then realized that “self” is that humanity?
I grew up entrenched in the false belief that what other people think of me is vitally important. Neighbors. Teachers. My mother’s friends. Strangers that pass me on the street. What if someone noticed my eyebrows were thin and my waist wasn’t? What if they saw my dragon was all the colors I liked best and not the greenish brown we learned in science class?
The price of acceptance is too high if it costs who we are.
It’s taken me a lifetime to figure out that what other people think of me isn’t important at all. The only thing that matters is what God thinks of me, and who I’m becoming.
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Sylvia Peterson is former co-pastor for Bald Hill Community Church and the author of “The Red Door: Where Hurt and Holiness Collide,” which can be purchased at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. She and her husband are chaplains for the Bald Hills Fire Department. You can email her at sylviap7@comcast.net.
