The Undiscovered Country

Conversations with Mini-Me

For the longest time I didn't like me. I am silly and weird, and too often too smart for my own good. Growing up people teased me, sometimes mercilessly. I soon believed that being silly and weird were wrong, and in order to be loved and accepted, I needed to be different. I needed to be "normal."

Whatever that is.

Only after I reached my 20s did I realize how much energy it took to be something I wasn't. It left me mentally and spiritually exhausted. Not only that, but people didn't accept me as much as I hoped they would.

Where did I go wrong? How can I be loved and accepted, and be the person God meant me to be?

So I went on a little journey, and I began to talk to the little girl inside me. The one untouched by pain, the one who believed in herself and everything around her. A little girl filled with an immeasurable hope and certainty that nothing could ever go wrong.

It didn't take long for me to realize that's the person God wanted me to be - in all her glorious silliness and weirdness. In all her hopefulness and innocence. Unscarred by time.

Now in the last half of my 40s, I've not only decided to embrace my weirdness and silliness, but the joy that comes from not acting like an adult all the time. It's okay to be childlike. To run around giggling. To make funny faces at people.

After all, if children know anything, they know how to embrace joy, and to express it with no regard over how it may look to others around them. They look at the world around them, not with boredom or cynicism, but with wonder and awe.

That's what my mini-me reminds me to do when I'm feeling not so good about myself, and the pressure of too many expectations I simply can't meet overwhelms me. It's okay to be sillly. It's okay to be weird. After all, if everyone was "normal," how boring life would be.

Converse with and embrace your own inner child, in all his or her glorious silliness and weirdness. Those conversations may also help lead you to the person God meant you to be.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me." (Matthew 18:1-5 NIV)