I am such a quirky person.
I am weird.
I am unique.
I am truly different.
Now if you are just meeting me for the first time, depending on the environment, you may find me friendly and outgoing. Or quiet and shy. (If you know me well, I realize that the quiet and shy me, my seem a bit of a stretch). Yet trust me, there are places where I just go into my shell.
I have often talked about my shy, nerdy, misfit self, especially in high school. I yearned to be just like everyone else. I hated that I stuck out like a sore thumb. We were poor, we were minorities, my dad was shameless in every way. I am not sure but I think being white might have been on my wish list. Huh? Well, in the community we were part of, the majority of people were white, educated and well off. I felt like I stuck out like at giraffe … I had HUGE glasses. I had no name jeans. I was so skinny, twig like skinny. I had huge feet. I tripped over my feet. There was nothing graceful about me. I had no skills in music, art nor did I have one athletic bone in me. I was beyond shy. One of my closest friends now loves telling about how when she talked to me that first day, I looked like I wanted to just blend into the locker rather than be spoken too. I was so different. I hated being different.
It took a lot of years for me to realize that I was different. I was special and lovable. I mean just because I did not like me… did not mean much. God put people in my life that loved me unconditional and over time, I saw myself through eyes of God and learned over the years to love me.
As I have aged, I have learned to see being different as a cool kind of thing. I have learned to see what God blessed me with, the crazy, quirky traits as a special gift.
I watch my boys embrace their differences. We live in a town, again, predominately white, though that is changing. They went to a school where they were they only minorities in the school for a long time, though that has changed too. Yet I love that they are able to embrace their uniqueness. I love that they are learning self love at an early age. I am sure they have their insecurities, of course but over all they seem to embrace their uniqueness.
I love this song…
Different As I was making supper last night it was playing and I found myself so grateful for my differences. I am working towards being different in a way that is pleasing to God. I love that He IS so different and that He invites me to be like Him. I love that as I open my heart, He is changing me, bit by bit. I want the world to see “that there is something different in me.”