Can't Make This Stuff Up!

by Susannah B. Lewis

  My mother wasn’t having any of it. Against my wishes, she called the bullies’ parents and gave them a piece of her mind. They defended their girls and denied their precious children would ever ridicule a schoolmate. My protective mama tried to help, but her involvement only fueled the girls’ fire to make my life living hell for two years. Now I was not only “fat,” but I was a “fat mama’s baby.”

  When I’d come home depressed, Mama would pray over me, “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” She continually told me how “fearfully and wonderfully” made I was, as I loosened my woven belt and dropped another dollop of mashed potatoes on my plate. Along with my mother’s powerful, Spirit-filled prayers, I also had some really supportive friends who cheered me up when those older girls made fun of me. Middle school was a rough time, but I got through it, and eventually the girls grew bored with insulting me and moved on.

  Side note: One of those bullies recently sent me a friend request on Facebook. We are instructed to love and forgive our enemies, yes, but nowhere in the Bible does it say we have to be friends with them on social media. I’ve never denied a request so quickly in my life.

  Anyway, the summer before my freshman year, a miracle occurred. I sprouted up about fourteen feet. And when I shot up tall like my father, the fat stretched vertically. Presto! For the first time in my life, I was thin, and all of that extra fat made for something to put in my training bra. When I walked into high school for the first time, feeling confident, I was approached by a group of boys I’d known my entire life.

  “Susannah, we thought you were a new girl. You aren’t fat anymore!”

  I retorted with, “No, I’m not new. But I see all of those zits on your face are.”

  That confidence was short-lived because those boys found a new reason to tease me. They made fun of my height. Lord, it was annoying. For two years, I constantly heard from a group of them, “How’s the air up there? How’s the air up there?” I slouched my shoulders and dashed into class and wished I was petite and could wear cute wedges that wouldn’t cause me to hit my head on lighting fixtures. Those boys really did a number to my self-esteem.

  One of those same boys asked me out a few years later and I told him, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you from way up here.”

  When I became an adult, I thought my days of being bullied were over, PTL. But, as my social media following grew, I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t the case. When you reach over a million people online, you’re bound to interact with some real miserable grouches who want to tear down anyone they can. I can’t even tell you how many nasty emails, messages, and comments I’ve received. Lord have mercy, I’ve had people criticize everything from my hair to my accent to my faith to how I raise my children. I’ve been told to die, shut up, and die again. I’ve been told I’m ignorant, closed-minded, and annoying. I’ve been told I’m a horrible writer, a horrible wife, I’m not funny, and I should do something about my eyebrows. (I couldn’t really disagree with that one. It had been a few months since my last waxing when I got that comment.) I’ve even been told that I use too many adjectives when I write! Someone really hated me because I use adjectives! For the love! I replied with, “Please kiss my fat, wide, round, cellulite-covered, lily-white . . .” I’ve been told my earrings are tacky, my eyeliner is crooked, my boobs are too small, my videos are too long, and even that I have ugly dogs. Listen, you can talk about my breast size all day long, but I’ll cut someone for talking about my dogs.

  I was doing a live video one day and telling a story about buying tall-length pants from China on eBay. Listen, tall-length pants in China are not the same as tall-length pants in America. I tried them on and they resembled the pleated culottes my chaperone, Mrs. Lee, used to wear to swim in at church camp. My entire calf was exposed.

  As I was telling this tale, a real-time comment popped up from a girl asking, “Who is this moron? Is she on drugs?” I tried to ignore the words on the screen and continue to tell my story, but I started to doubt myself. Why does she think I’m a moron? Do people agree with her? Do I sound like a moron? Why does she think I’m on drugs? I don’t look like I’m on drugs, do I? Are my pupils dilated? Why would she say that? Because I’m rambling about China pants? Do you have to be on drugs to ramble about China pants on the internet? And then she commented again. And again. Didn’t this person know I could see what she was saying about me? Why was she taking a dig at me? I was just trying to bring a little laughter to the world at the expense of a bad eBay purchase.

  She kept on berating me, and somehow, I morphed from a moron to a “backwoods Bible-toting hillbilly.” My faithful viewers came to my defense and told this heckler to quit watching if she found me so annoying. Which makes sense, doesn’t it? When I’m annoyed by something, I take the “flight” approach. This person obviously took the “fight” approach. I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of the Kardashians, so I simply change the channel when they come on instead of banging out a twelve-page letter criticizing their life choices and sending it to them via overnight mail.

  And yet, she kept on. I couldn’t take any more of her insults. I told her to go back to whatever bridge underbelly she came from and clicked on her name and blocked her from the video. Sometimes, that’s exactly what we have to do. We don’t have to be susceptible to those who find so many faults with us. If you have someone in your life who is constantly bringing you down, block, delete, and repeat if necessary. You don’t need someone dumping all of their insecurities and hurts onto you.

  When I read nasty comments like those, I suddenly feel like that chubby middle schooler or that awkwardly tall high schooler again. I am consumed by doubt over an insult made by an iPhone-toting coward. And the Devil loves that. Oh, he loves it because he wants us to be uncomfortable in our own skin. He wants us blind to our worth and blind to how much Jesus loves us. He wants us heartbroken and worried and struggling with low self-esteem. He loves it when we base our self-worth on what some bully says about us, because the Devil is the biggest bully of all.

  This is just another reason it is so important to get the truth found in Scripture into our hearts (and our children’s hearts). The Enemy will use someone degrading us as the perfect opportunity to bring us down, but we can’t let him. Nope. We’ve got to tell him to shut up. We’ve got to replace his lies with truth. We have to replace his invectives with what God, the Creator of the universe, says about us.

  Hey, guess what, ya big bully?

  I am a child of God. I am a branch of the true Vine. I am a friend of Jesus. I am forgiven. I am accepted by Christ. Through Christ, I have wisdom and redemption. My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in me. I am chosen. I am holy. I am blameless. I am meant to produce good works. I am an heir of Christ’s promises. I am precious. I am wonderfully made. I am a conqueror. I am special. I am beautiful. God supplies my needs. God loves me. God chose me. God accepts me. God made me in His perfect image. And God made some really cute dogs just for me too.

  And the more we embrace the beautiful truths found in the Bible about who we really are in Christ, the more stable, grateful, and confident we will be in this world. We can hold our heads up high and know exactly who we are.

  Galatians 1:10 says, “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

  That powerful scripture reminds me that it doesn’t matter what everyone else says about me. It doesn’t matter if I don’t meet someone else’s expectations. It doesn’t matter that someone thinks I’m a moron on drugs. It doesn’t matter that some lady in Des Moines with a puffy-paint cat sweater thinks my nose is too wide. It doesn’t matter that some guy hiding behind a computer screen eating Cheetos says my hair looks like broom straw, because I know who I am in Christ. I know what He says about me is so much more important than what this world says about me.

  I love, though, on the days when a comment or an email
does manage to get me down, that God has a beautiful way of reminding me who I am in Him. A stranger will approach me in a store and smile kindly and say, “I appreciate what you do. You make me laugh, and I just want to thank you for that.” He sends an angel, an angel right here on earth shopping in Hobby Lobby in the 50-percent-off wood décor section, to give me encouragement on the days I need it the most.

  CHAPTER 10

  Don’t Wear Them Leggings

  A few years ago, during the dead of winter, some friends and I were suffering with a terrible bout of cabin fever. Our children had been forced to stay home from school for several days because there was a thin layer of ice on the road, and the high outside was some absurd number like eight, and the low was an even more absurd number like two. Listen, eight and two don’t belong on a weather forecast. Those numbers belong on the scoreboard at an elementary school basketball game.

  When the sun finally reappeared and warmed the earth and melted the horrific ice that bound our bored children to our hips for nearly a week, school resumed. (Praise hands!) My friends and I thought it would be fitting to celebrate with a nice dinner (that didn’t consist of canned soup or SpaghettiOs) and to hear a local band perform at a restaurant.

  I was really excited to get out for the night. I was beyond ready to trade in the stained sweatpants I’d been wearing all week for a new outfit. I’d seen several young ladies wearing leopard-print leggings lately and I thought, Well, I’m hip. It would probably be a good idea for me to get a pair of those. Let’s just say the first clue I wasn’t “hip” was the fact that I used the word hip, all right?

  So I went to my favorite store and scampered over to unknown territory—the junior department. I didn’t care that every young girl in that area of the store assumed I was shopping for my daughter. I quickly found a snazzy, hip pair of leopard-print leggings. I paired them with a black tunic and furry boots and then examined my thirty-three-year-old self in the mirror and all I could say was, “RAWR!” I was smoking hot, ladies. Smoking. Hot.

  Or so I thought.

  I was feeling really good about myself all night as I laughed with my friends and snapped my fingers to the band covering a Bruce Springsteen tune. Never mind I was the only person in the restaurant wearing leopard-print leggings and fuzzy boots. I shrugged it off and conjured my inner Sammy Davis Jr. and told myself those other cats just weren’t as hip as me.

  The next day, though, a friend posted some online photos of our night on the town. Right there, front and center, I stuck out like a sore, spotted thumb next to my sisters in their nice jeans and respectable sweaters and billowy scarves. (It’s not that standing out is bad—in fact, it’s beautiful to be different, but this wasn’t a good kind of standing out, all right? Trust me. I was more like a hot, spotted mess that refused to be ignored.) I was mortified as I examined those weird leggings and fuzzy boots, and I realized I looked exactly like a zoo cat. And speaking of zoo cats, I totally could have passed for a cougar too. I’m not talking about the American wildcat (they don’t have spots), but I’m referring to the term used to refer to an older woman who preys on a younger man. This would explain why the college-aged waiter was sweating profusely and seemed nervous to make eye contact with me.

  Needless to say, as I noticed the leopard print didn’t match my crows’ feet, I tossed the leggings in a donate pile and decided I was about twenty years too old to shop in the junior department. I mourned that loss for a moment, but I moved on and admitted wearing those leopard-print leggings had been a poor decision.

  Yes, worse than the decision to cut my own bangs when I couldn’t get an appointment with my hair stylist. Worse than the decision to purchase a fish sandwich from a gas station. Worse than believing a guy who knocked on my door one night and told me a sob story about selling children’s books for college tuition and then writing him a two-hundred-dollar check for the Curious George collection only to realize a year later I never received the Curious George collection.

  And to top all of that, when I was in high school, I made the poor decision to date a guy who wasn’t worth two cents. I knew by the way he’d treated former girlfriends that I shouldn’t have anything to do with him because he was a lying, cheating, no-good scoundrel, but his hair was pretty and his truck had loud pipes. So, like a fool, I said yes when he asked me out. Only a few weeks into our relationship, he picked me up to go to the movies with a big purple bruise on his neck. It appeared to be a disgusting hickey, but he was adamant he had been “hurt” while playing basketball. I’ve heard of people tearing a ligament or spraining an ankle or breaking a bone while playing basketball, but I’ve never heard of Michael Jordan getting a bruised neck. But, being a fool, I believed him and went to the movies with a boy who had a hickey I hadn’t even given him!

  I told my mother about his “basketball injury” when I got home that night, and the sigh she let out sounded like a tractor tire leaking air. “Susannah! Baby, are you dumb as a box of rocks?” Apparently, I was.

  I’ve made some really poor decisions in my thirty-seven years, and I’m sure you have too. Many times, we make bad choices simply because we don’t consult with the One who matters. Oh, we ask our friends or our parents or our spouse or Yahoo Answers (is that still a thing?) for advice because we love to run to the phone instead of the throne. And if we do consult the Lord, we don’t wait for His answer, or we give in to our flesh even when our spirit is screaming no! So, we jump in with both feet only to find ourselves in debt or with buyers’ remorse or incredibly short bangs.

  And many times, we do things simply because we have the right to do them. But having the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it right. Spandex is not a right—it’s a privilege. We also have the right to freedom of speech, but we probably shouldn’t be cussing out waitresses who accidentally spill our drink or making it our mission to bully every person on social media who has a different opinion. We even have the right to wear leopard-print leggings, but Lord knows it isn’t wise.

  How it must grieve the Lord when we look in all the wrong places for wisdom and then wonder why everything is going wrong.

  We serve a God who cares about every intricate detail of our lives, so we should see what He has to say about our decisions. Maybe there’s no proverb that says, “Thou shalt not wear animal prints after the age of thirty,” but we can find all of the instructions and solutions in the Good Book.

  King Solomon, the author of Proverbs, was Israel’s first “celebrity,” known for his wisdom and wealth. Even the youth looked up to Solomon solely because he was wise. Not like today. Our kids look up to idiots just because they are popular on Instagram or they have cool tennis shoes or wear “clout goggles” (what in the world?) or know how to drop a sick beat. But Proverbs was actually written primarily for upper-class educated boys. King Solomon wanted to convey to them that a sensible life is one revolving around God, not them.

  Proverbs isn’t just for upper-class Israeli boys, though. The wisdom found in this book is needed to raise our children, manage our finances, exercise leadership, treat others kindly with our words and deeds, view sex morally, eat and drink healthily, behave as husbands and wives should, control our thoughts, receive correction, deal with offenses, and handle our emotions and attitudes, all of which results in a life of prosperity.

  Proverbs is a manual for living.

  We oughtn’t get knowledge and wisdom confused. Wisdom has nothing to do with how many academic degrees hang on your wall or how many trophies sit on your shelf. I know some “scholars” who are a few cards short of a full deck. Instead, wisdom is the art of competently living in whatever conditions we find ourselves and knowing nothing takes priority over God. Being wise means making choices today that we will be happy with tomorrow (and it means not having to untag yourself in photos of yourself wearing leopard print on social media).

  David, King Solomon’s father, also said in Psalm 119:66, “Teach me good discernment and knowledge. For I believe in Your comman
dments” (NASB).

  This is our cry. We should be begging the Lord to teach us and give us wisdom and help us discern which path to take and which choice to make. I should have done that before I agreed to go out with the no-good scoundrel in high school. God probably would have told me to steer clear of him, and I would have argued with God, “But he has pretty hair and loud pipes on his truck.” But when God gives us an answer, whether we like it or not, we must obey. It’s such sweet surrender when we have faith God will guide our steps and never steer us wrong.

  CHAPTER 11

  Get in the Game, Mamas

  When my daughter came to me, at seven years old, and said, “Mama, I want to play softball!” I cringed a little. Because I was a horrible softball player. I couldn’t hit the ball to save my life. I ran away screaming, arms flailing, when the ball traveled toward me at high rates of speed. And listen, sliding on dirt is impossible for a child who met a quota of four corndogs a day. It didn’t take long for me to grow tired of the humiliation, give up the game, and sit on the sidelines to watch my friends play. Honestly, I was scared my little girl had inherited my softball abilities and would be humiliated too.

  During her first softball game, Natalie Ann proved to be her mother’s daughter. She couldn’t catch a ball for squat and she actually turned in a circle when swinging the bat. I was relieved we’d bought a cheap glove instead of a good one, because this wasn’t going to last long. Like me, she’d soon get tired of failing and want to pursue something else.

  But each week, she was ecstatic to go back to practice. Yes, she kept striking out and the ball never made it into her glove, but she kept going. She refused to just sit in the bleachers and cheer for her friends. She wanted to be on that field, so she kept trying. She went out in the front yard and threw the ball up in the air, and after getting hit in the face a few times, she finally started catching it.