No one is youer than you

Personal Photo: Taken by Shannon Deppen in 2020

Personal Photo: Taken by Shannon Deppen in 2020

How many of you have heard the saying 'No one is youer than you'? The phrase is a classic Dr. Seuss way of telling you that you should feel good in your skin and appreciate the things that make you different from everyone else. This is a great message and while we often find ourselves telling children this mantra, trying to teach people about the value of sticking to their roots, and finding peace within your body, I think we can all agree that we struggle to live up to it. We live in a world where we are bombarded with self-care books, 'you are worth it' magazines, and thousands of other advertisements telling us that we will love ourselves more if we just buy this, do that, or eat these things. While I believe that practicing self-love is important, I think it is more important to consider what sources we go to in order to encourage this self-love. My mom put it a good way and considers what we need to be is more 'soul-care' rather than 'self-care.' What she means is that in order to live a life for God, we need to feed our souls with God's love and His presence in our lives. When we do this, we can find peace within ourselves and will not look for cheap substitutes within this world to try and accept ourselves. Because God loves us, we can love ourselves and love others. 1 John 4:19 informs us that "We love because He first loved us" and while we might sometimes remind ourselves of these things, the world can often have a sneaky way of making us feel as though God's love is not a good enough reason to love ourselves and others.

We all have insecurities, right? Each of us has been picked on, bullied, pestered, attacked, and more for some trait or traits that we cannot control. I want to take you through a personal journey and to do so, I need to share some characteristics about myself: I am a lanky, 5'8" girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I was a runner and a straight A student in high school, described by the doctor as 'long and lean' and I soaked myself in running and academic studies throughout my entire scholastic and athletic career. I was and still am a pretty shy but energetic person, I enjoy challenging myself, staying behind the scenes in most instances and I love to read, write, paint, and cook. I like to keep to myself, mind my own business, and keep a lot of my personal life away from my public life. My husband is my safe place, my family is my comfort zone, my mom is my best friend, and my faith is the absolute most important thing to me.

Now that you know all of this about me, I can talk to you about how people took the opportunity to take these traits, physical and emotional, and pick me apart. A boyfriend's grandmother, the first time she met me, asked "could you pick them any taller," a boyfriend specifically told me that he wished I was shorter, and I have been made uncomfortable because of my natural body type. I spent a good amount of time believing I was too tall, I would slouch to look shorter in photos, and I would never ever wear heels. The weird thing about this is that I never considered myself 'too tall' until someone mentioned it to me, until someone picked on me about it. Sometimes it would come back around to me that someone thought I was 'snobby' or acted 'too good' for others. I never saw myself this way and in truth, I would really try hard to not judge, not talk badly about others, and not spread any drama about classmates, teammates, or family members. When I heard that people thought this about me, it made me self-conscious. I have always loved to read, and I would take my books to class with me. I like romance, Christian romance, suspense romance, westerns, regency romance, romantic comedies, and basically any other genre that the guy ends up with the girl. I am a hopeless romantic, what can I say? My teacher pointed to my book and said, "I just judged you for reading a book like that," and I was teased on numerous other occasions for my specific book choices. I have never felt the need to apologize for the books I read, but it did force me to expect the teasing before it was even dished out. I have always been an athletic person and I have always been, in general, lanky. I have been poked at for this, felt uncomfortable because people said I did not have to work for my body, that it came easy to me, that 'not everyone is a size two.' In reality, I ran thousands of miles and went through my own body insecurities when I stopped running. I work out when I can and try to eat well.

Why am I telling you all of these things? Well, because I have been told that I have the perfect life, that I have had it easy, that it all comes naturally to me. I have even been told that I am 'too close to my family.' The truth is that I work hard for a lot of pieces of who I am, and I have realized that it does not matter which parts I work hard for and which parts that really do come naturally because people will forever find something wrong with me. They will forever find something wrong with you, too. I have always known that God loves me, but it can be difficult to quiet the earthly voices in order to really listen to God telling you that He loves you. In order to do this, we really need to continue to feed our souls. You've been picked on too, right? I would put money on it, actually. Too tall, too short, too vocal, too quiet, too traditional, too new-school, too small, too big, too pretty, too funny, too smart, too serious, etc. All in all, you're always going to be too much for someone, and they are going to try to make you second guess those things about yourself.

Sometimes it doesn't even take someone to point it out to you before you decide there is something you inherently don't like about yourself. That scar you got when you were twelve, the birthmark on your neck, the way your toes turn inward, etc. We pick ourselves apart. Maybe someone teased us about it a couple times, but the hard part is when you believe it. I said earlier that I spent a long time wishing I was shorter. I believed that those parts of me were off-putting and not worth my love. Why do we do this? Isn't it sad that we try so hard to embrace our bodies and our personalities and who we are and yet we tear ourselves down so often? I am convinced it is because we do not spend enough time caring for our souls. We might practice self-care with a day of face masks and skincare, but how much do we really prioritize replenishing our souls with God's love and word when the world depletes it from us?

I titled this article 'No one is youer than you' because God hand-crafted you to make you exactly who you were supposed to be. Jeremiah 31:3 tells us that "The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." He chose every detail about you, He decided on your body type, your height, your eye, skin, hair color, your shoe size, and everything else. He decided how you think, the ways you view the world, and He did it all with love at the core. When we pick ourselves apart, we are questioning the ways in which God created us. Can you imagine how that makes God feel, when He loves us so very much? Sometimes we mask our insecurities by focusing on the things we do like about ourselves, but how much does this really help us accept who we are? It can be so easy to look at our peers and jump to the conclusion that they are 'perfect' or 'better' or have strengths where our insecurities lie. It is a dangerous thing to do, but I think we are all guilty of it and it is hard to see what people truly struggle with, what parts of them they feel they need to defend, and which parts they are really comfortable with. Instead of loving them, we often compare ourselves to them and not only pick ourselves apart, but others too. Psalms 36:7 reads "How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings." God's love is constant, and it is something we can easily remind ourselves of whenever we feel as though we are too much of something or not enough of something else. It can help us keep ourselves in check when we find ourselves projecting our own insecurities onto others and it can encourage us to replenish our souls by practicing applying God's love in our own lives.

We are undoubtedly imperfect, which can be a struggle in and of itself. Because we are not perfect creatures does not mean that God did not perfectly choose out who we are supposed to be, our gifts, and the ways in which we will contribute to the world. Romans 5:8 reminds us that "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The reality that we are saved through God's love crushes any doubt we could possibly have about our self-worth. We are not worthy of His love, and yet He loves us anyway. We cannot consider our own opinions of ourselves as more important than God's opinion of us. He loves us and He loves us so much that He gave up His only son so that we may be saved. My insecurity about my height pales in comparison, doesn't it? God created me with His love and I can use my height as a way to help others. I was in Walmart with my mom a few months ago and an elderly lady came around the corner into the aisle we were in and she came up to me, put her hand on my elbow, and said 'you're tall' and asked me to assist her in getting something from a high shelf. I was able to help her and something that was an insecurity of mine years ago became the exact thing that this woman needed so that I could assist. I was able to turn my own imperfect thoughts about this insecurity upside down. Consider when Isaiah 54:10 states that "Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you." Our insecurities are opportunities for us to feed our soul with God's love and practice the ways in which He loves us on ourselves and on our neighbors.

In church this week, the sermon's message was about the Good Samaritan. It is a common story, but in short, Jesus tells a parable to a lawyer about a man who was beaten and left half-dead on the side of the road. A priest sees him and passes him by on the other side of the road and a short time later a Levite did the same thing. However, a Samaritan man comes along and when he sees the man, comes to him and helps him. He cleans the wounds, takes him to an inn and pays for his recovery. The sermon reminded us that we are the man left to die by the side of the road and Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He comes to us and saves us and loves us. He paid the price for our recovery and our life and by His demonstration of pure, unselfish love, we can therefore help and love others. My point in connecting the church's sermon to my message here is to remind ourselves that when we accept the love and healing Hand of Jesus, we are saved. His love rescues us from our own sin, our own inability to love ourselves and others, and gives us the unwavering love of His own to feed our soul and grant us the perspective to be able to love.

The butterfly at the top of this article was one that I saw outside of the window when I was in a break between my virtual classes in 2020. He was struggling to fly and I wanted to go outside and check on him. As you can see from the photograph, his wings do not work right. He might have gotten attacked by a bird or caught up in a wind storm, but after trying to leave him in a safe place, I decided I wanted to help him. We knew he was too easy a target to leave outside and if we abandoned him, he would surely die. Clay and I got a large container, filled it with plants (real and fake) and made it the most comfortable butterfly pad that we possibly could. We filled a bottle cap with butterfly nectar and every day we would take him outside to crawl on some real flowers and we would make sure he was fed. The little guy never did fly, and his wings, at first glance might not have been as beautiful and symmetric as the ones we see flitting through the sky. However, he was absolutely beautiful in his own way. He taught me a lot about how we too often focus on what we cannot do, the parts of us that do not look perfect, and 'what if' we could do this or that. He was exactly who he needed to be in order to make a difference. We are just like this pretty butterfly.

The bottom line is that even though we might sometimes be too much or not enough to ourselves and to people around us, we can squelch these earthly comparisons and doubts with the amazing love of God. He can feed our soul and we can care for our souls by seeking Him out in everything we do, think, and say. We can practice dwelling in God's love and using it as an avenue to love others, to see strengths where they see weaknesses and to harbor and grow in the expression of God's love. When we do these things, we truly house a peacefulness in our souls and can better see the hand of God in our lives. We can appreciate the areas we need to work on, be grateful for the strengths we already have, and strive to grow towards God in every step of life.