Today’s post focuses on self-esteem and spirituality, and comes to us courtesy of the Belle of the Blog. Belle presents a particularly interesting (and original) take on the relationship between our view of ourselves, our view of others, and our view of the world and What Made It. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!

“I know I’m somebody, ‘cause God don’t make no junk.”

I remember the first time I ever saw or heard that phrase. It was on a little plaque hanging over the desk of one of my mother’s co-workers. There was a little country-mouse of a girl on the plaque, with mussed-up hair and two missing front teeth. I was seven and it seemed really silly to me to see something like that in an office. I also felt like whoever wrote it had made a mistake. God most indeed did make junk. I was proof of it.

I realized this one day in the first grade when my best friend LeeAnn told our entire class I didn’t have a daddy. Suddenly, taunts of “You’re a bastard!” sung out loudly by a kid named Buddy, were ringing in my ears. Everyone was laughing at me. I cried. I pleaded with them to stop and told them my dad had been killed in a car accident, but LeeAnn told them I was lying. And she was right. And I knew I was supposed to be ashamed of this truth. My own mother had even said to me, “Your father didn’t want you, but I love you.”

That day when I went home, I asked my grandmother what a bastard was and she told me that it was a child who didn’t have a daddy. She said, “Your mother is a whore and you’re a bastard, but I love you anyway.” And she did love me. And I know she didn’t know any better than to say that. But boy…did it stick with me.

I spent my whole life wishing I could be loved. Not because I was smart. Not because I had a father. Not in spite of the fact that I didn’t have a father. Somewhere along the line I also began to wish I could like myself. No matter what nice things friends or teachers or even my crazy mother or grandmother told me, I never really believed them. How could any of it be true when I didn’t have a father? When I was a bastard, the child of a whore?

When I was 15, I got lured back to the church where I had attended Sunday school as a small child. I remembered everything about the church…. The crisp white cinderblock walls. The way it smelled. The red Kool-Aid and Lorna Doones we always had for a snack during Vacation Bible School.

Soon, I was quite active. I volunteered in the nursery. I joined the Teen Choir. I fell head over heels for the sense of belonging I had there.

Soon I was baptized, believing that if I gave my life to God (whatever that meant), I would find happiness. I would find love. So, on a warm, sunny Sunday morning, I was dunked by our minister and praise the Lord! I had been saved. At least on paper. Continue Reading »