self image?

Here is a young teenage boy, constantly moving from one school to another, developing a case of teenage acne, and just unsure enough of himself to feel on the outside of life. Wish I could have told him not to fear.

Some talk on Sunday of a friend suffering from depression, broken marriage, estranged children. I do not know her but know of this type of human suffering. The way she was raised gave her a bad self image.

How can we help someone from this deep seated psychological damage? Can God heal such a long established and constantly fed wound?

The Mother's day pictures this weekend reminded me of something I observed at my high school reunion. A particular guy, who had married the head cheerleader type girl, was partying in such a way that you could tell he had a very strong self image. He would ask a shy fellow graduate to dance and you could see them blossom.

There was a pastor's wife there, very popular in high school, who had gone through a divorce, and you could tell she was uncomfortable reviving all those cliques from high school, and this man pulled her out of her adult self into her more confident self in moments.

I struggled during that weekend with feelings of being out of the in crowd as well. The cheerleader asked me to dance, and I too felt a sense of being lifted from a bad high school self image. For a moment, I was in with the in crowd.

I think our gospel of the Father's love is supposed to help heal this feeling of failure and outness, and I think we do a pretty bad job of expressing that through the church. Fear based, behavior based thinking casts us into the out crowd and we are depressed that we just don't measure up. I may be overreaching on this, but my heart breaks for stories of wounded people who hate life because they feel hated by others.